How to remove Knownwarn pop-ups? — Fix Guide

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Knownwarn pop-up notices can show up unexpectedly, covering the material of the website you went to or opening your browser when you do not desire it to be opened.

Clicking on the Knownwarn ad can cause the injection of different malware or unwanted programs. In this guide, you will see the manual of Knownwarn popups clearing in various ways, and also inspecting your personal computer for additional viruses presence.

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What are Knownwarn pop-ups?

Knownwarn popups are a result of adware activity. Adware is a kind of malware that presents you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click ads, which produces a massive volume of earnings for adware suppliers. These ads may consist of sometimes shocking composition, or have a web link to malevolent content/website, because adware maintainers have no purpose to check the goodness of the web content they are going to reveal – their solitary target is cash.

Knownwarn push notification

Knownwarn push notification.

Pop-up advertising itself is a good, low-priced and really productive advertising tool1. It permits the vendor to attach the customers’ interest to their site, as well as the customers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they wish to buy. When the customer will get a pop-up notification that the TV set he likes to purchase is provided at the online shop he/she checked out earlier with a 15% price cut, one will definitely use this chance and buy it. Taking into consideration the exceptionally low cost for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising and marketing tool is a much-loved thing amongst the marketing teams of large online sellers.

Nonetheless, such a profitable strategy could not be missed by malware creators. Ability to demonstrate the popup ads forcibly to the victims of malware attack is a great basis for evil-minded manipulations with the popup advertisements. And Knownwarn.com ads is one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a details for the Knownwarn site
SiteKnownwarn.com
HostingAS39572 DataWeb Global Group B.V.
United States, Alexandria
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address192.243.59.13
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorTrk, Www, Waisheph
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Knownwarn virus?

There are a plenty of methods of getting infected by the adware that result in the Knownwarn popups storm. A lion’s part of this malware incidents is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Free software may likewise be downloaded from the main site, and the adware is presented as a legitimate bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A number of individuals oftentimes use the unreliable programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, various utilities that are free, or even hacked programs. Every one of these kinds of applications are unsafe, since it is quite simple to include a Knownwarn malware under the guise of part of the license hacking script, or as a component of the self-made algoritm inside of the Windows optimization tool.

Knownwarn popup malware can additionally be concealed in the promotion somewhere on the strange site. Such web pages are generally loaded with colorful and blinking ads, and their proprietors often permit any promos to be posted on their page. Hence, clicking such banners is a shot in the dark: only the advertisement contractor knows what will happen when you click this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you can additionally get something far more unsafe, like ransomware or coin miner; the substantial share of coin miners circulation is exactly after the malicious ads.

People dislike popups

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

Potentially undesirable applications, like Knownwarn popup virus may provoke a wide range of different troubles on your computer. Distracting is not the single effect – pop-ups can show you the banners, where you are offered to download another strange program, or “a perfect security tool”. Scareware is often distributed with the last motto. Potentially unwanted programs, in turn, can 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 ads are also used as a distribution method 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 tapping these advertisements, they can be clicked by whoever who also uses your personal computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the things may become much more serious, and it will be much harder to solve it without data and money loss. It is recommended to remove the viruses with anti-malware applications as soon as possible.

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

The tutorial of Knownwarn adware elimination consists of 2 sections. Initially, we need to eliminate the malware, and afterwards correct the effects of its action. The elimination task is really easy, due to the fact that it can be executed even with the use of Microsoft Defender – anti-malware tool that is present on all computers with Windows 8/10. Nonetheless, as a result of its huge resources utilization, along with some failures that can be serious for some groups of individuals, Defender is frequently disabled by the users, so its use is probably impossible. What’s more, various trojan viruses are capable to shut off the embedded antivirus. It is far better to make use of the separated program that will not have such vulnerabilities.

I would certainly suggest you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven security device that will undoubtedly wipe out the malware from your PC and create an impenetrable cover with a Proactive protection function. But let’s take care of Knownwarn adware initially.

Removing Knownwarn 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 Knownwarn 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 web browsers are reset, you need to make sure that your web browser will definitely connect the correct DNS while connecting to the site you want. Create a text file named “hosts” on your desktop, after that open it and fill it with the following lines3:

# 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.

Nonetheless, there is one issue that makes things a lot more difficult to restore, particularly without the anti-malware software. Most of adware variants that are utilized to show you the Knownwarn pop-up advertisements are modifying the deep browser settings, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to change your browser settings after your system was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will collapse quickly. Sometimes, you will see no crash, but large lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 seconds, and after that it will be back to the typical, until 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.

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 Knownwarn Pop-ups?

Name: Knownwarn

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