Mactik.click Ads Removal Guide — How to Fix It?

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Mactik.click pop-up alerts can appear unexpectedly, covering the subject of the website you explored or opening your web browser when you don’t wish it to be opened.

Clicking on the Mactik.click promotion may trigger the injection of different malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the guide of Mactik.click popups removal in a couple of manners, as well as inspecting your system for other malware existence.

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What are Mactik.click pop-ups?

Mactik.click popups are a consequence of adware activity. Adware is a type of malware that demonstrates to you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click ads, which creates a large amount of earnings for adware representatives. These promotions may include explicit material, or have a web link to malevolent content/website, because adware maintainers have no reason to check the goodness of the web content they are going to reveal – their single target is money.

Mactik.click push notification

Mactik.click push notification.

Pop-up promotions itself is an excellent, low-priced and also really productive marketing solution1. It allows the seller to attach the buyers’ interest to their website, and the buyers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they wish to purchase. When the person will receive a pop-up alert that the TV set he desires to buy is offered at the online store he/she checked out previously with a 15% price cut, one will undoubtedly use this chance and buy it. Considering the extremely small cost for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising tool is a favorite thing among the marketing teams of big online retail stores.

Nevertheless, such a profitable plan could not be missed by malware developers. Option to demonstrate the popup ads by force to the targets of malware attack is a great basis for evil-minded tricks with the popup promotions. And Mactik.click advertisements is among hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a short details for the Mactik.click site
SiteMactik.click
HostingAS13335 Cloudflare, Inc.
United States, San Francisco
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address188.114.97.3
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorGripetravel, Globaledyta, Fasterpcnetwork
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Mactik.click virus?

There are a lot of ways of getting contaminated by the adware that cause the Mactik.click popups storm. A lion’s part of this computer virus cases is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Free software may additionally be downloaded from the main web page, and the adware is supplied as a legitimate bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A plenty of individuals frequently utilize the dubious programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, a wide range of tools that are free, and even hacked programs. All of these kinds of programs are risky, because it is very easy to integrate a Mactik.click malware under the cover of part of the license hacking script, or as a component of the self-made algoritm within the Windows optimization tool.

Mactik.click popup malware can also be concealed in the promotion somewhere on the unusual website. Such sites are in most cases full of intense and blinking ads, and their owners often accept any type of promos to be placed on their page. Therefore, clicking such banners is a risky thing: only the advertisement contractor realizes what will happen when you click this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you can likewise receive something a lot more unsafe, 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 Mactik.click pop-up virus may cause a wide range of different troubles on your PC. Distracting is not the only effect – pop-ups may present you the advertisements, where you are offered to download another unknown application, or “a perfect anti-malware tool”. Scareware is usually distributed under the last slogun. Potentially unwanted programs, 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 potentially unwanted programs and fake antiviruses, popup-related promotions are also exploited as a spreading way by different trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such viruses is 100% unpleasant, and can cost you hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not interacting with these banners, they may be clicked by someone who also uses your PC – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the situation can become much more serious, and it will be much harder to solve it without information loss. It is recommended to eliminate the viruses with antivirus applications as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Mactik.click pop-up advertisements?

The manual of Mactik.click adware clearing consists of 2 parts. First, we need to eliminate the malware, and afterwards fix the results of its action. The removal process is pretty easy, because it may be done even with the use of Microsoft Defender – security program that is available on all computers with Windows 8/10. Nonetheless, because of its large resources utilization, as well as some defects that may be pivotal for some types of individuals, Defender is frequently disabled by the users, so its utilization is most likely impossible. Furthermore, a variety of trojan viruses are capable to disable the embedded antivirus. It is much better to make use of the separated program that will not have such vulnerabilities.

I would certainly advise you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven security tool that will certainly eliminate the malware from your personal computer and also create an invulnerable shield with a Proactive protection feature. But let’s deal with Mactik.click adware first.

Removing Mactik.click 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 Mactik.click 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 correct DNS while connecting to the website you want. Make a text file titled “hosts” on your computer’s desktop, then open it and fill it with the following text3:

# 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.

Nevertheless, there is one issue that makes the things a lot harder to fix, particularly without the anti-malware program. Most of adware versions that are used to show you the Mactik.click pop-up ads are adjusting the deep browser settings, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to change your browser settings after your machine was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly crash soon. In certain cases, you will see no crash, however, significant lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 secs, and afterwards 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.

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 Mactik.click Pop-ups?

Name: Mactik.click

Description: Mactik.click - 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 Mactik.click push notifications?” or “why do Mactik.click pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Mactik.click 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 advise it for malware removal.
  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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