Remove Gowas.live Pop-up Virus — How to Remove?

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Gowas.live pop-up notices can appear out of the blue, covering the post of the website you went to or opening your web browser when you don’t want it to be opened.

Clicking on the Gowas.live advertisement may trigger the injection of different malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the tutorial of Gowas.live popups clearing in various ways, and also checking your computer for additional malware presence.

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What are Gowas.live pop-ups?

Gowas.live popups are an effect of adware presence. Adware is a kind of malware that shows you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click ads, which generates a major amount of income for adware suppliers. These ads might have explicit information, or have a web link to malevolent content/website, due to the fact that adware maintainers have no reason to check the goodness of the material they are going to reveal – their solitary target is cash.

Gowas.live push notification

Gowas.live push notification.

Pop-up marketing itself is a very good, cheap and also very efficient marketing method1. It permits the seller to link the customers’ attention to their site, as well as the buyers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they intend to buy. When the consumer will get a pop-up notification that the TV set he likes to buy is provided at the online shop he/she saw earlier with a 15% price cut, one will definitely use this opportunity and buy it. Taking into consideration the extremely small cost for the popups and their targeting, such a promotion and marketing tool is a favourite thing amongst the advertising teams of huge internet stores.

Nonetheless, such a rewarding scheme could not be missed by virus creators. Option to demonstrate the popup ads by force to the people of malware attack is an ideal basis for evil-minded adjustments with the popup ads. And Gowas.live promotions is just one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a short summary for the Gowas.live site
SiteGowas.live
HostingAS14061 DigitalOcean, LLC
United States, North Bergen
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address159.223.153.123
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorFodus, Enimpdoor, Qualitydating
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Gowas.live virus?

There are a number of ways of becoming contaminated by the adware that lead to the Gowas.live popups storm. A lion’s part of this virus cases is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Freeware may additionally be downloaded from the main site, and the adware is delivered as a legit bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A lot of people oftentimes use the uncertain programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, a wide range of tools that are free of cost, or even hacked programs. Every one of these types of software are unsafe, since it is quite easy to include a Gowas.live malware under the guise of part of the license hacking script, or as a component of the self-made algoritm inside of the Windows optimization tool.

Gowas.live popup malware can additionally be concealed in the promotion somewhere on the unusual site. Such sites are typically loaded with bright and blinking advertisements, and their proprietors typically approve any type of promos to be placed on their page. Therefore, clicking such banners is a risky thing: only the advertisement provider knows what will happen when you press this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you can likewise receive something far more dangerous, like ransomware or coin miner; the large share of coin miners distribution is exactly after the malicious ads.

People dislike popups

The statistic shows that people dislike popup advertising more than other types of promotions

Potentially unwanted programs, like Gowas.live pop-up virus can cause a lot of problems on your PC. Distracting is not the only problem – pop-up notifications may present you the banners, where you are offered to download one more dubious application, or “a amazing security tool”. Scareware is often distributed with the use of the last slogun. Potentially unwanted programs, in turn, may have spyware functions. And it is pretty hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a normal one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and dubious antiviruses, popup-related promotions are also exploited as a spreading way by different trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such malware is 100% unwanted, and can cost you hundreds or even thousands of dollars. And even if you are not tapping these ads, they can be clicked by someone who also makes use of your computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the situation may become much more serious, and it will be much harder to solve it without information loss. It is recommended to get rid of the viruses with anti-malware programs as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Gowas.live pop-up advertisements?

The tutorial of Gowas.live adware elimination consists of 2 sections. First, we need to remove the malware, and afterwards correct the consequences of its activity. The elimination process is very simple, due to the fact that it may be performed even with using Microsoft Defender – anti-malware program that is available on all computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, due to its large resources consumption, as well as some defects that can be crucial for some types of users, Defender is frequently turned off by the users, so its utilization is most likely impossible. Furthermore, a wide range of trojan viruses have the ability to shut off the embedded antivirus. It is far better to make use of the separated program that will not have such weakness.

I would certainly suggest you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven anti-malware tool that will certainly exterminate the malware from your system and also make an impenetrable cover with a Proactive protection feature. But let’s deal with Gowas.live adware initially.

Removing Gowas.live popup virus with GridinSoft Anti-Malware

  • Download and install GridinSoft Anti-Malware. After the installation, you will be offered to perform the Standard Scan. Approve this action.
  • Gridinsoft Anti-Malware during the scan process

  • Standard scan checks the logical disk where the system files are stored, together with the files of programs you have already installed. The scan lasts up to 6 minutes.
  • GridinSoft Anti-Malware scan results

  • When the scan is over, you may choose the action for each detected virus. For all files of Gowas.live malware the default option is “Delete”. Press “Apply” to finish the malware removal.
  • GridinSoft Anti-Malware - After Cleaning

Now, when the computer is clean of viruses, we can proceed to the browser reset. You can do this step manually, as well as with the use of GridinSoft Anti-Malware.

Reset browser settings to default

Manual method of browser reset

To reset Edge, do the following steps :
  1. Open “Settings and more” tab in upper right corner, then find here “Settings” button. In the appeared menu, choose “Reset settings” option :
  2. Reseting the Edge browser

  3. After picking the Reset Settings option, you will see the following menu, stating about the settings which will be reverted to original :
For Mozilla Firefox, do the next actions :
  1. Open Menu tab (three strips in upper right corner) and click the “Help” button. In the appeared menu choose “troubleshooting information” :
  2. The first step to revert Mozilla Firefox

  3. In the next screen, find the “Refresh Firefox” option :
  4. The second step of Firefox restoration
    After choosing this option, you will see the next message :
    The last step for Firefox
If you use Google Chrome
  1. Open Settings tab, find the “Advanced” button. In the extended tab choose the “Reset and clean up” button :
  2. In the appeared list, click on the “Restore settings to their original defaults” :
  3. Finally, you will see the window, where you can see all the settings which will be reset to default :
Opera can be reset in the next way
  1. Open Settings menu by pressing the gear icon in the toolbar (left side of the browser window), then click “Advanced” option, and choose “Browser” button in the drop-down list. Scroll down, to the bottom of the settings menu. Find there “Restore settings to their original defaults” option :

  2. After clicking the “Restore settings…” button, you will see the window, where all settings, which will be reset, are shown :

When the browsers are reset, you need to make sure that your browser will connect the appropriate DNS while connecting to the web page you want. Make a text file named “hosts” on your computer’s desktop, then open it and fill it with the following text3:

# Copyright (c) 1993-2006 Microsoft Corp.
#
# This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows.
#
# This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each
# entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should
# be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name.
# The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one
# space.
#
# Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual
# lines or following the machine name denoted by a ‘#’ symbol.
#
# For example:
#
# 102.54.94.97 rhino.acme.com # source server
# 38.25.63.10 x.acme.com # x client host
# localhost name resolution is handle within DNS itself.
# 127.0.0.1 localhost
# ::1 localhost

Find the hosts.txt file in C:/Windows/System32/drivers/etc directory. Rename this file to “hosts.old.txt” (to distinguish it from the new one), and then move the file you created on the desktop to this folder. Remove the hosts.old from this folder. Now you have your hosts file as good as new.

However, there is one problem that makes the things a lot more difficult to fix, especially without the anti-malware software. Most of adware versions that are utilized to show you the Gowas.live pop-up promotions are modifying the deep browser setups, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to fix your browser settings after your machine was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly collapse quickly. In certain cases, you will see no crash, but significant lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 secs, and after that it will be back to the normal, up until you attempt to open settings once again.

Reset your browser settings with GridinSoft Anti-Malware

To reset your browser with GridinSoft Anti-Malware, open the Tools tab, and click the “Reset browser settings” button.

Tools tab in GridinSoft Anti-Malware

You can see the list of the options for each browser. By default, they are set up in the manner which fits the majority of users. Press the “Reset” button (lower right corner). In a minute your browser will be as good as new.

Reset Browser Settings tab in GridinSoft Anti-Malware

The browser reset is recommended to perform through the antivirus tool by GridinSoft, because last is also able to reset the HOSTS file without any additional commands.

How to Remove Gowas.live Pop-ups?

Name: Gowas.live

Description: Gowas.live - a lot of users became a target for the pop-up advertisements. I have a lot of friends who literally bombed me with the questions like “how to remove Gowas.live push notifications?” or “why do Gowas.live pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Gowas.live pop-ups, which may corrupt your browser’s correct performance, and create a lot of troubles while you are working.

Operating System: Windows

Application Category: Adware

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References

  1. More about pop-up ads on Wikipedia.
  2. GridinSoft Anti-Malware review and the reasons why I advise it for malware elimination.
  3. Official Microsoft guide for hosts file reset.

About the author

Wilbur Woodham

I was a technical writer from early in my career, and consider IT Security one of my foundational skills. I’m sharing my experience here, and I hope you find it useful.

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