Remove Hedgehag Pop-up Ads — How to Fix Gude

Hedgehag pop-up notices may show up out of the blue, covering the material of the page you explored or opening your browser when you do not need it to be opened.

Clicking on the Hedgehag promotion can trigger the injection of different malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the guide of Hedgehag popups removal in various methods, as well as examining your personal computer for other malware presence.

It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!

Removing Hedgehag 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 Hedgehag pop-ups?

Hedgehag popups are an effect of adware action. Adware is a type of malware that presents you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click ads, which generates a significant amount of income for adware representatives. These ads might contain explicit content, or have a link to harmful content/website, because adware maintainers have no reason to inspect the goodness of the material they are going to reveal – their single target is money.

Hedgehag push notification.

Pop-up promotions itself is a good, low-cost and also very efficient marketing instrument¹. It allows the seller to link the customers’ interest to their website, as well as the buyers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they intend to buy. When the customer will get a pop-up alert that the TV set he desires to purchase is provided at the online shop he/she saw previously with a 15% discount, one will undoubtedly use this opportunity and get it. Taking into consideration the incredibly small cost for the popups and their targeting, such a marketing tool is a much-loved thing among the marketing departments of huge online sellers.

Nevertheless, such a profitable system could not be missed by malware developers. Option to demonstrate the popup ads by force to the targets of malware attack is an excellent basis for malevolent tricks with the popup ads. And Hedgehag.com ads is among hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a summary for the Hedgehag site

How have I got the Hedgehag virus?

There are a plenty of methods of becoming infected by the adware that create the Hedgehag popups tornado. A lion’s part of this virus incidents is after the free software or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Freeware can additionally be downloaded from the main web page, and the adware is provided as a legit bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A plenty of individuals often utilize the unreliable programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, different utilities that are free, or even hacked programs. All of these kinds of software are risky, due to the fact that it is very easy to integrate a Hedgehag 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.

Hedgehag popup malware may additionally be concealed in the promotion somewhere on the odd web page. Such sites are usually packed with colorful and blinking advertisements, and their proprietors often permit any kind of promotions to be posted on their page. Therefore, clicking such banners is a risky thing: only the ad provider realizes what will occur when you click this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you can additionally receive something much more risky, like ransomware or coin miner; the big share of coin miners distribution is exactly after the malicious advertisements.

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

Potentially undesirable applications, like Hedgehag popup virus may provoke a lot of troubles on your computer. Distracting is not the single effect – pop-ups may display you the ads, where you are offered to download another unknown application, or “a effective anti-malware tool”. Scareware is usually spread under the last slogun. Potentially undesirable applications, in turn, may have spyware functions. And it is quite hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a normal one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and fake antiviruses, popup-related ads are also exploited as a distribution method by various trojan viruses, for instance – coin miners. The consequences of actions of such malware is 100% unwanted, and can cost you several hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not clicking these banners, they may be clicked by whoever who also makes use of your PC – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the situation can become much more serious, and it will be much harder to solve it without data and money loss. It is recommended to wipe out the viruses with antivirus programs as soon as possible.

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

The tutorial of Hedgehag adware removal includes 2 sections. Initially, we need to eliminate the malware, and afterwards deal with the effects of its action. The removal task is very easy, due to the fact that it can be done even with making use of Microsoft Defender – anti-malware software that is present on all computers with Windows 8/10. However, due to its huge resources usage, along with some defects that can be crucial for some groups of users, Defender is often turned off by the users, so its usage is most likely impossible. Furthermore, various trojan viruses are able to disable the embedded antivirus. It is far better to use the separated program that will not have such vulnerabilities.

I would certainly recommend you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware² – a well-proven anti-malware tool that will undoubtedly exterminate the viruses from your PC and also create an invulnerable shield with a Proactive protection feature. However, let’s manage Hedgehag adware initially.

Removing Hedgehag 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 Hedgehag 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 web browsers are reset, you need to ensure that your browser will be connected the appropriate DNS while connecting to the site you want. Create a text file titled “hosts” on your pc’s desktop, then open it and fill it with the following text³:

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 a lot harder to restore, particularly without the anti-malware software. The majority of adware variants that are utilized to show you the Hedgehag pop-up advertisements are adjusting the deep browser configurations, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to fix your browser settings after your PC was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly collapse quickly. In some cases, you will see no crash, however, 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, until you attempt 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.

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 the reasons why I advise it for malware elimination.
3. Official Microsoft guide for hosts file reset.