Remove Hotlocalchat.com Pop-up Virus — How to Remove?

Hotlocalchat.com pop-up alerts can show up out of the blue, covering the subject of the website you checked or opening your web browser when you don’t want it to be opened.

Clicking on the Hotlocalchat.com promotion can trigger the injection of various malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the guide of Hotlocalchat.com popups clearing in multiple manners, as well as inspecting your system for other malware presence.

It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!

Removing Hotlocalchat.com 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 Hotlocalchat.com pop-ups?

Hotlocalchat.com popups are a result of adware activity. Adware is a sort of malware that suggests you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which produces a major volume of profit for adware suppliers. These advertisements may contain sometimes shocking composition, or have a web link to malicious content/website, because adware maintainers have no reason to check the goodness of the content they are going to show – their solitary target is money.

Hotlocalchat.com push notification.

Pop-up advertising itself is a good, low-cost and also very productive advertising tool¹. It allows the seller to attach the buyers’ attention to their site, as well as the buyers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they want to purchase. When the person will receive a pop-up notification that the TV set he likes to purchase is available at the online store he/she saw earlier with a 15% price cut, one will certainly use this opportunity and buy it. Taking into consideration the very low price for the popups and their targeting, such a marketing tool is a favourite thing among the advertising teams of large online sellers.

However, such a profitable scheme could not be missed by virus creators. Potential to show the popup advertisements by force to the targets of malware invasion is a great basis for malevolent adjustments with the popup ads. And Hotlocalchat.com advertisements is one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a short details for the Hotlocalchat.com site

How have I got the Hotlocalchat.com virus?

There are a plenty of methods of becoming infected by the adware that lead to the Hotlocalchat.com popups tornado. A lion’s part of this computer virus instances is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Free software can likewise be downloaded from the main website, and the adware is offered as a legitimate bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A number of users often work with the dubious programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, various apps that are free, or perhaps hacked programs. Every one of these sorts of software are unsafe, due to the fact that it is quite easy to include a Hotlocalchat.com malware under the cover of part of the license hacking script, or as a component of the self-made algoritm inside of the Windows optimization tool.

Hotlocalchat.com popup malware can additionally be hidden in the promotion somewhere on the odd site. Such sites are typically loaded with colorful and blinking ads, and their owners typically approve any promotions to be placed on their web page. Thus, clicking such banners is a risky thing: only the advertisement provider knows what will occur when you press this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you can likewise receive something a lot more damaging, like ransomware or coin miner; the substantial share of coin miners distribution is exactly after the malicious ads.

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

Potentially unwanted applications, like Hotlocalchat.com popup virus may initiate a variety of different troubles on your PC. Distracting is not the only problem – pop-up notifications may display you the promotions, where you are offered to get another strange application, or “a effective security tool”. Scareware is usually spread with the use of the last slogun. Potentially unwanted applications, in turn, can have spyware functions. And it is pretty hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a good one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and pseudo antiviruses, popup-related ads are also used as a spreading way by different trojan viruses, for instance – coin miners. The consequences of activity 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 whoever who also makes use of your computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the things can become much more serious, and it will be much harder to deal with 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 Hotlocalchat.com pop-up advertisements?

The manual of Hotlocalchat.com adware elimination includes 2 sections. First, we need to eliminate the malware, and afterwards fix the consequences of its activity. The removal task is really simple, because it can be executed even with making use of Microsoft Defender – security software that is present on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nonetheless, due to its significant resources consumption, along with some defects that may be critical for some types of users, Defender is oftentimes disabled by the users, so its utilization is likely impossible. Additionally, a wide range of trojan viruses are able to shut off the embedded antivirus. It is better to use the separated program that will not have such weakness.

I would certainly advise you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware² – a well-proven antivirus device that will surely eliminate the viruses from your personal computer and also create an invulnerable shield with a Proactive protection feature. However, let’s manage Hotlocalchat.com adware first.

Removing Hotlocalchat.com 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 Hotlocalchat.com 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 browser will definitely connect the proper DNS while connecting to the web page you want. Make a text file named “hosts” on your desktop, after that open it and fill it with the following content³:

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.

Nevertheless, there is one issue that makes the things a lot more difficult to restore, particularly without the anti-malware program. The majority of adware variants that are utilized to show you the Hotlocalchat.com pop-up promotions are adjusting the deep browser configurations, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to change your browser settings after your machine was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will crash quickly. Sometimes, you will see no crash, but large lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 secs, and afterwards it will be back to the normal, till you try to open settings one more time.

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 advertisements on Wikipedia.
2. GridinSoft Anti-Malware review and also the reasons why I suggest it for malware removal.
3. Official Microsoft guide for hosts file reset.