Remove Hanksforyou Virus — How to Fix Guide

Hanksforyou pop-up alerts may show up unexpectedly, covering the material of the website you visited or opening your browser when you don’t desire it to be opened.

Clicking the Hanksforyou ad can cause the injection of various malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the tutorial of Hanksforyou popups removal in several methods, as well as checking your computer for extra malware presence.

It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!

Removing Hanksforyou manually may take hours and may damage your PC in the process. I recommend you to download GridinSoft Anti-Malware for threats removal. Allows to complete scan and cure your PC during the trial period.

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What are Hanksforyou pop-ups?

Hanksforyou popups are a result of adware activity. Adware is a type of malware that shows you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click promotions, which produces a massive amount of revenue for adware representatives. These ads may consist of sometimes shocking content, or have a link to malicious content/website, considering that adware maintainers have no purpose to examine the goodness of the material they are going to show – their solitary target is cash.

Hanksforyou push notification.

Pop-up marketing itself is a very good, low-cost and also very effective advertising solution¹. It makes it possible for the seller to link the buyers’ attention to their website, as well as the customers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they wish to buy. When the person will receive a pop-up notification that the TV set he wishes to buy is available at the online shop he/she visited earlier with a 15% discount, one will undoubtedly use this chance and purchase it. Taking into consideration the incredibly low price for the popups and their targeting, such a promotion and marketing method is a favorite thing amongst the advertising teams of big internet sellers.

Nonetheless, such a rewarding plan could not be missed by malware creators. Option to demonstrate the popup advertisements by force to the targets of malware attack is an excellent basis for malicious manipulations with the popup ads. And Hanksforyou.biz ads is one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a short details for the Hanksforyou

How have I got the Hanksforyou virus?

There are a plenty of methods of becoming infected by the adware that lead to the Hanksforyou popups storm. A lion’s part of this virus instances is after the free software or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Free software may likewise be downloaded from the main website, and the adware is offered as a legit bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A huge amount of individuals frequently utilize the uncertain programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, a wide range of apps that are free, and even hacked programs. All of these sorts of programs are unsafe, due to the fact that it is very simple to integrate a Hanksforyou malware under the guise of part of the license hacking script, or as a part of the self-made algoritm inside of the Windows optimization tool.

Hanksforyou popup malware can additionally be concealed in the promotion somewhere on the strange web page. Such sites are typically filled with bright and blinking ads, and their proprietors generally permit any promos to be placed on their page. Thus, clicking such banners is a shot in the dark: only the ad provider knows what will occur when you click this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you may also receive something a lot more threatening, like ransomware or coin miner; the substantial share of coin miners circulation is exactly after the malicious advertisements.

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

Potentially undesirable programs, like Hanksforyou pop-up virus may initiate a variety of problems on your PC. Distracting is not the only problem – pop-ups may show you the advertisements, where you are offered to get one more strange program, or “a effective anti-malware tool”. Scareware is often spread with the last slogun. Potentially unwanted programs, in turn, can have spyware functions. And it is very hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a legit one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and dubious antiviruses, popup-related banners are also exploited as a distribution method by various trojan viruses, for instance – coin miners. The consequences of actions of such malware is 100% unpleasant, and can cost you hundreds or even thousands of dollars. And even if you are not clicking these ads, they may be clicked by someone who also uses your personal computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the situation can become much more serious, and it will be much harder to solve it without data loss. It is recommended to wipe out the viruses with antivirus applications as soon as possible.

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

The guide of Hanksforyou adware elimination contains 2 parts. First, we need to remove the malware, and then correct the effects of its activity. The elimination process is really simple, because it can be performed even with the use of Microsoft Defender – anti-malware software that is available on all computers with Windows 8/10. Nonetheless, as a result of its huge resources usage, as well as some failures that can be serious for some groups of users, Defender is oftentimes turned off by the users, so its utilization is most likely impossible. In addition, different trojan viruses are capable to disable the embedded antivirus. It is far better to make use of the separated program that will not have such exposures.

I’d recommend you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware² – a well-proven antivirus device that will undoubtedly remove the malware from your personal computer and make an invulnerable cover with a Proactive protection function. However, let’s manage Hanksforyou adware initially.

Removing Hanksforyou 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.

• 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.

• When the scan is over, you may choose the action for each detected virus. For all files of Hanksforyou malware the default option is “Delete”. Press “Apply” to finish the malware removal.

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. 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. In the next screen, find the “Refresh Firefox” option :

After choosing this option, you will see the next message :

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 web browser will connect the proper DNS while connecting to the site you want. Create a text file named “hosts” on your computer’s desktop, after that open it and fill it with the following lines³:

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 the things a lot more difficult to repair, specifically without the anti-malware program. The majority of adware variations that are utilized to show you the Hanksforyou pop-up advertisements are modifying the deep browser settings, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to fix your browser settings after your machine was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will collapse soon. In certain cases, you will see no crash, but large lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 seconds, and then it will be back to the normal, up until you attempt to open settings once more.

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.

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.

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.

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