Remove Guesswhatnews Pop-up Virus — How to Remove?

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Guesswhatnews pop-up notices can show up unexpectedly, covering the content of the website you visited or opening your browser when you do not want it to be opened.

Clicking the Guesswhatnews ad may lead to the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the manual of Guesswhatnews popups clearing in several ways, and also checking your computer for extra malware existence.

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What are Guesswhatnews pop-ups?

Guesswhatnews popups are an effect of adware action. Adware is a sort of malware that shows you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which creates a substantial volume of profit for adware representatives. These promotions may contain sometimes shocking information, or have a web link to harmful content/website, due to the fact that adware maintainers have no reason to inspect the goodness of the web content they are going to show – their solitary target is cash.

Guesswhatnews push notification

Guesswhatnews push notification.

Pop-up advertising itself is an excellent, affordable and also very productive marketing solution1. It makes it possible for the vendor to link the buyers’ attention to their site, as well as the customers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they wish to buy. When the customer will receive a pop-up notification that the TV set he wishes to purchase is provided at the online shop he/she saw earlier with a 15% price cut, one will definitely use this possibility and buy it. Considering the extremely low cost for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising and marketing instrument is a favorite thing amongst the marketing teams of large internet stores.

However, such a rewarding system could not be missed by virus creators. Option to demonstrate the popup advertisements forcibly to the victims of malware attack is an excellent basis for evil-minded tricks with the popup promotions. And Guesswhatnews.com promotions is just one of hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a details for the Guesswhatnews site
SiteGuesswhatnews.com
HostingAS16509 Amazon.com, Inc.
Germany, Mörfelden-Walldorf
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address108.138.7.53
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorMonterrey, Begil, Sulseerg
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Guesswhatnews virus?

There are a huge amount of ways of becoming infected by the adware that trigger the Guesswhatnews popups storm. A lion’s part of this computer virus incidents is after the free software or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Free software can likewise be downloaded from the official website, and the adware is provided as a legitimate bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A lot of people oftentimes use the uncertain programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, a wide range of utilities that are free, or perhaps hacked programs. Every one of these sorts of applications are dangerous, since it is quite simple to integrate a Guesswhatnews malware under the cover of part of the license hacking script, or as a part of the self-made algoritm within the Windows optimization tool.

Guesswhatnews popup virus can likewise be concealed in the advertisement somewhere on the unusual web page. Such websites are typically full of intense and blinking ads, and their proprietors often accept any promos to be posted on their page. Hence, clicking such banners is a shot in the dark: only the advertisement provider knows what will occur when you press this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you may likewise get something far more hazardous, like ransomware or coin miner; the substantial share of coin miners circulation is exactly after the malicious promotions.

People dislike popups

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

Potentially undesirable applications, like Guesswhatnews pop-up virus can cause a variety of problems on your computer. Distracting is not the single effect – pop-up notifications may display you the promotions, where you are offered to download one more strange program, or “a effective security tool”. Scareware is usually spread with the last motto. Potentially unwanted applications, in turn, may have spyware functions. And it is pretty hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a normal one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and pseudo antiviruses, popup-related advertisements are also used as a distribution way by various trojan viruses, for instance – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such malware is 100% unwanted, and can cost you hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not clicking these banners, they can be clicked by someone who also uses your PC – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the things can become much more serious, and it will be much harder to deal with it without data and money loss. It is recommended to wipe out the viruses with anti-malware applications as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Guesswhatnews pop-up advertisements?

The guide of Guesswhatnews adware clearing includes 2 parts. First, we need to deal with the malware, and then correct the consequences of its activity. The elimination task is very easy, since it may be executed even with using Microsoft Defender – security tool that is available on all computers with Windows 8/10. Nonetheless, because of its substantial resources usage, as well as some bugs that can be serious for some kinds of individuals, Defender is oftentimes turned off by the users, so its usage is likely impossible. Furthermore, various trojan viruses can shut off the embedded antivirus. It is much better to use the separated program that will not have such vulnerabilities.

I’d suggest you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven anti-malware device that will undoubtedly wipe out the malware from your PC and make an impenetrable shield with a Proactive protection feature. But let’s handle Guesswhatnews adware first.

Removing Guesswhatnews 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 Guesswhatnews 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 ensure that your web browser will definitely be connected the appropriate DNS while connecting to the website you want. Create a text file named “hosts” on your computer’s desktop, then open it and fill it with the following content3:

# 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 issue that makes things much harder to fix, particularly without the anti-malware program. The majority of adware variants that are used to show you the Guesswhatnews pop-up ads are changing the deep browser configurations, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to fix your browser settings after your system was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly crash quickly. Sometimes, you will see no crash, however, large lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 seconds, and after that it will be back to the normal, until you try to open settings 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 Guesswhatnews Pop-ups?

Name: Guesswhatnews

Description: Guesswhatnews - 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 Guesswhatnews.com push notifications?” or “why do Guesswhatnews.com pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Guesswhatnews 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 also the reasons why I recommend 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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