How to remove Makelinker.net pop-ups? — Fix Guide

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Makelinker.net pop-up notifications can appear out of the blue, covering the subject of the website you went to or opening your browser when you do not desire it to be opened.

Clicking the Makelinker.net advertisement can trigger the injection of different malware or unwanted programs. In this guide, you will see the manual of Makelinker.net popups clearing in a couple of ways, and also examining your system for extra viruses existence.

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What are Makelinker.net pop-ups?

Makelinker.net popups are an outcome of adware action. Adware is a sort of malware that demonstrates to you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click ads, which produces a significant amount of revenue for adware suppliers. These promotions may consist of explicit material, or have a link to malevolent content/website, considering that adware maintainers have no purpose to check the goodness of the web content they are going to reveal – their single target is cash.

Makelinker.net push notification

Makelinker.net push notification.

Pop-up advertising itself is a very good, cheap and really effective advertising solution1. It allows the seller to link the buyers’ attention to their website, and the buyers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they intend to purchase. When the consumer will get a pop-up alert that the TV set he desires to purchase is provided at the online shop he/she saw previously with a 15% discount, one will certainly use this possibility and get it. Taking into consideration the extremely low cost for the popups and their targeting, such a promotion and marketing instrument is a much-loved thing amidst the advertising teams of big online retail stores.

Nevertheless, such a successful plan could not be missed by malware developers. Ability to demonstrate the popup advertisements forcibly to the people of malware invasion is an ideal basis for evil-minded adjustments with the popup ads. And Makelinker.net advertisements is just one of hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a details for the Makelinker.net site
SiteMakelinker.net
HostingAS13335 Cloudflare, Inc.
United States, San Francisco
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address188.114.96.3
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorNotifications, Advnotsystems, Sifenews
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Makelinker.net virus?

There are a plenty of ways of becoming contaminated by the adware that create the Makelinker.net popups storm. A lion’s part of this computer virus incidents is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Free software can also be downloaded from the main web page, and the adware is supplied as a legit bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A plenty of users oftentimes utilize the unreliable programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, different tools that are free of cost, and even hacked programs. Every one of these types of applications are dangerous, due to the fact that it is extremely easy to include a Makelinker.net 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.

Makelinker.net popup virus can likewise be concealed in the advertisement somewhere on the odd web page. Such web pages are in most cases filled with colorful and blinking advertisements, and their owners typically permit any kind of promotions to be placed on their page. Therefore, clicking on such banners is a shot in the dark: only the advertisement provider knows what will happen when you press this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you may additionally receive something much more threatening, like ransomware or coin miner; the large share of coin miners distribution is exactly after the malicious promotions.

People dislike popups

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

Potentially unwanted programs, like Makelinker.net pop-up virus may initiate a lot of different troubles on your personal computer. Distracting is not the single effect – pop-ups can present you the advertisements, where you are offered to get one more dubious program, or “a effective anti-malware tool”. Scareware is usually spread with the last motto. Potentially undesirable programs, in turn, may have spyware functionality. And it is pretty hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a legit one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and pseudo antiviruses, popup-related advertisements are also exploited as a distribution method by different trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of actions of such viruses is 100% unwanted, and can cost you several hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not tapping these ads, they may be clicked by whoever who also uses your personal computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the situation may become much more serious, and it will be much harder to deal with it without data loss. It is recommended to remove the viruses with antivirus programs as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Makelinker.net pop-up advertisements?

The tutorial of Makelinker.net adware removal contains 2 sections. Initially, we need to deal with the malware, and then correct the consequences of its action. The elimination task is really easy, because it may be executed even with making use of Microsoft Defender – anti-malware tool that is available on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nonetheless, as a result of its significant resources utilization, as well as some errors that may be critical for some kinds of individuals, Defender is often turned off by the users, so its usage is probably impossible. What’s more, a variety of trojan viruses are capable to turn off the embedded antivirus. It is much better to make use of the separated program that will not have such exposures.

I would certainly recommend you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven anti-malware device that will surely remove the malware from your system and also create an invulnerable shield with a Proactive protection feature. But let’s take care of Makelinker.net adware first.

Removing Makelinker.net 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 Makelinker.net 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 proper DNS while connecting to the website you want. Make a text file titled “hosts” on your pc’s 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.

Nevertheless, there is one trouble that makes things a lot more difficult to repair, especially without the anti-malware program. A lot of adware versions that are utilized to show you the Makelinker.net pop-up ads are modifying the deep browser configurations, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to fix your browser settings after your system was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly crash quickly. In certain cases, you will see no crash, however, large lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 seconds, and after that it will be back to the normal, up 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 Makelinker.net Pop-ups?

Name: Makelinker.net

Description: Makelinker.net - 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 Makelinker.net push notifications?” or “why do Makelinker.net pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Makelinker.net 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 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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