Remove Joked.live Pop-up Ads — How to Fix Gude

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Joked.live pop-up notices may appear unexpectedly, covering the material of the page you visited or opening your browser when you do not desire it to be opened.

Clicking on the Joked.live promotion may lead to the injection of different malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the tutorial of Joked.live popups clearing in several manners, and also checking your computer for extra viruses existence.

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What are Joked.live pop-ups?

Joked.live popups are a result of adware activity. Adware is a kind of malware that shows you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click promotions, which generates a significant volume of earnings for adware distributors. These advertisements might contain sometimes shocking composition, or have a web link to malicious content/website, due to the fact that adware maintainers have no reason to check the goodness of the content they are going to reveal – their solitary target is money.

Joked.live push notification

Joked.live push notification.

Pop-up promotions itself is a good, low-cost and also extremely efficient advertising method1. It enables the seller to link the buyers’ interest to their site, as well as the customers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they wish to buy. When the person will get a pop-up notification that the TV set he likes to buy is available at the online shop he/she visited previously with a 15% discount, one will definitely use this opportunity and get it. Taking into consideration the exceptionally low cost for the popups and their targeting, such a promotion and marketing method is a much-loved thing amongst the advertising departments of big internet retailers.

Nevertheless, such a rewarding plan could not be missed by malware creators. Potential to demonstrate the popup advertisements by force to the people of malware attack is an excellent basis for evil-minded manipulations with the popup advertisements. And Joked.live ads is just one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a short info for the Joked.live
SiteJoked.live
HostingAS14061 DigitalOcean, LLC
United States, Santa Clara
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address147.182.255.121
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorMosoilsold, Trackspecialdomain, Usefulhead
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Joked.live virus?

There are a lot of methods of getting contaminated by the adware that trigger the Joked.live popups storm. A lion’s part of this malware instances is after the free software or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Freeware may also be downloaded from the official site, and the adware is presented as a legit bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A plenty of individuals regularly utilize the dubious programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, various tools that are free, or perhaps hacked programs. Every one of these types of programs are risky, due to the fact that it is quite easy to integrate a Joked.live 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.

Joked.live popup virus can likewise be concealed in the advertisement somewhere on the strange website. Such websites are in most cases filled with bright and blinking ads, and their proprietors generally permit any kind of promotions to be placed on their page. Thus, clicking such banners is a shot in the dark: only the ad contractor realizes what will occur when you click this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you may also receive something a lot more risky, 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 Joked.live pop-up virus can provoke a lot of troubles on your personal computer. Distracting is not the single problem – pop-ups may display you the banners, where you are offered to download one more strange program, or “a perfect security tool”. Scareware is usually spread under the last motto. Potentially unwanted applications, in turn, may have spyware functions. And it is very hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a normal one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and dubious antiviruses, popup-related banners are also exploited as a spreading way by different trojan viruses, for instance – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such viruses is 100% unwanted, and can cost you several hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not tapping these advertisements, they may be clicked by someone who also makes use of your computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the things may become much more serious, and it will be much harder to deal with it without data and money loss. It is recommended to get rid of the viruses with antivirus applications as soon as possible.

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

The guide of Joked.live adware removal includes 2 sections. Initially, we need to get rid of the malware, and afterwards deal with the effects of its action. The removal task is really simple, since it can be done even with the use of Microsoft Defender – anti-malware software that is available on all computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, because of its large resources consumption, as well as some problems that can be crucial for some categories of users, Defender is oftentimes disabled by the users, so its utilization is most likely impossible. Additionally, different trojan viruses are capable to disable the embedded antivirus. It is much better to use the separated program that will not have such exposures.

I’d advise you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven antivirus tool that will certainly erase the viruses from your computer and also make an impenetrable shield with a Proactive protection feature. But let’s manage Joked.live adware first.

Removing Joked.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 Joked.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 web browser will definitely connect the right DNS while connecting to the website you need. Make a text file titled “hosts” on your pc’s desktop, after that 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 problem that makes things a lot harder to fix, particularly without the anti-malware program. Most of adware variations that are utilized to show you the Joked.live pop-up advertisements are changing the deep browser configurations, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to change your browser settings after your computer was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will crash quickly. In certain cases, you will see no crash, however, significant lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 seconds, and then it will be back to the normal, until you attempt 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.

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 Joked.live Pop-ups?

Name: Joked.live

Description: Joked.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 Joked.live push notifications?” or “why do Joked.live pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Joked.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 advertisements on Wikipedia.
  2. GridinSoft Anti-Malware overview and 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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