Remove Listen-heres Virus — How to Fix Guide

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Listen-heres pop-up notices may appear unexpectedly, covering the material of the website you went to or opening your browser when you don’t wish it to be opened.

Clicking the Listen-heres promotion can lead to the injection of various malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the tutorial of Listen-heres popups clearing in various manners, as well as inspecting your PC for other malware presence.

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What are Listen-heres pop-ups?

Listen-heres popups are an effect of adware action. Adware is a kind of malware that shows you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which creates a large amount of income for adware distributors. These ads might contain explicit material, or have a web link to malicious content/website, because adware maintainers have no purpose to examine the goodness of the material they are going to reveal – their solitary target is cash.

Listen-heres push notification

Listen-heres push notification.

Pop-up promotions itself is a good, low-priced and really productive marketing instrument1. It makes it possible for the vendor to link the customers’ attention to their site, as well as the buyers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they intend to purchase. When the person will receive a pop-up alert that the TV set he desires to purchase is provided at the online store he/she visited previously with a 15% price cut, one will undoubtedly use this opportunity and get it. Taking into consideration the extremely small cost for the popups and their targeting, such a marketing method is a much-loved thing amidst the marketing departments of big internet sellers.

Nevertheless, such a profitable system could not be missed by virus developers. Option to show the popup advertisements by force to the people of malware invasion is an ideal basis for malicious manipulations with the popup advertisements. And Listen-heres.com advertisements is just one of hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a short info for the Listen-heres site
SiteListen-heres.com
HostingAS39572 DataWeb Global Group B.V.
Netherlands, Amsterdam
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address185.177.94.152
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorWebouttwo, Video, Content
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Listen-heres virus?

There are a number of ways of becoming contaminated by the adware that trigger the Listen-heres popups tornado. A lion’s part of this virus instances is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Free software may likewise be downloaded from the main website, and the adware is supplied as a legitimate bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A lot of individuals oftentimes use the uncertain programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, various utilities that are free, or perhaps hacked programs. All of these types of applications are risky, due to the fact that it is very easy to include a Listen-heres 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.

Listen-heres popup virus can also be concealed in the promotion somewhere on the unusual website. Such websites are typically full of colorful and blinking ads, and their proprietors generally permit any promos to be published on their page. Hence, clicking such banners is a shot in the dark: only the advertisement contractor realizes what will happen when you press this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you may additionally get something far more unsafe, like ransomware or coin miner; the big share of coin miners distribution is exactly after the malicious advertisements.

People dislike popups

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

Potentially undesirable applications, like Listen-heres pop-up virus may cause a variety of different troubles on your PC. Distracting is not the only problem – pop-ups may present you the banners, where you are offered to get one more strange program, or “a effective security tool”. Scareware is usually spread with the use of the last slogun. Potentially undesirable applications, in turn, may have spyware functionality. And it is very hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a good one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and fake antiviruses, popup-related promotions are also chosen as a distribution way by different trojan viruses, for example – 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 tapping these banners, they can be clicked by someone who also makes use of 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 loss. It is recommended to remove the viruses with antivirus applications as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Listen-heres pop-up advertisements?

The manual of Listen-heres adware elimination consists of 2 sections. Initially, we need to remove the malware, and after that deal with the results of its activity. The elimination procedure is quite simple, because it may be done even with making use of Microsoft Defender – anti-virus program that is present on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. However, due to its significant resources usage, along with some problems that can be critical for some groups of users, Defender is frequently disabled by the users, so its utilization is likely impossible. Furthermore, various trojan viruses are able to shut off the embedded antivirus. It is far better to make use of the separated program that will not have such exposures.

I would certainly recommend you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven security tool that will certainly exterminate the malware from your computer and also make an impenetrable cover with a Proactive protection feature. However, let’s handle Listen-heres adware first.

Removing Listen-heres 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 Listen-heres 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 ensure that your browser will definitely connect the correct DNS while connecting to the site you need. Make a text file titled “hosts” on your computer’s desktop, then 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 problem that makes the things much more difficult to repair, specifically without the anti-malware program. A lot of adware variants that are used to show you the Listen-heres pop-up advertisements are altering the deep browser configurations, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to change your browser settings after your computer was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly collapse quickly. Sometimes, you will see no crash, but huge lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 seconds, and afterwards it will be back to the typical, till you try to open settings once 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.

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 Listen-heres Pop-ups?

Name: Listen-heres

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