Mekickcold.live Ads Removal Guide — How to Fix It?

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Mekickcold.live pop-up notifications can appear out of the blue, covering the material of the website you explored or opening your web browser when you don’t need it to be opened.

Clicking on the Mekickcold.live advertisement can trigger the injection of various malware or unwanted programs. In this guide, you will see the manual of Mekickcold.live popups removal in multiple methods, and also examining your system for extra viruses presence.

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What are Mekickcold.live pop-ups?

Mekickcold.live popups are a result of adware presence. Adware is a kind of malware that demonstrates to you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which generates a significant volume of revenue for adware suppliers. These advertisements might include explicit content, or have a link to malicious content/website, since adware maintainers have no purpose to inspect the goodness of the content they are going to show – their single target is cash.

Mekickcold.live push notification

Mekickcold.live push notification.

Pop-up advertising itself is an excellent, low-priced and very successful marketing tool1. It enables the vendor to link the customers’ attention to their site, as well as the buyers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they wish to purchase. When the person will receive a pop-up notification that the TV set he wishes to buy is offered at the online shop he/she checked out previously with a 15% price cut, one will certainly use this opportunity and purchase it. Taking into consideration the incredibly low price for the popups and their targeting, such a marketing method is a favorite thing amidst the advertising departments of large online retailers.

Nevertheless, such a profitable scheme could not be missed by malware developers. Potential to demonstrate the popup advertisements forcibly to the targets of malware invasion is an ideal basis for malevolent adjustments with the popup ads. And Mekickcold.live ads is just one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a short info for the Mekickcold.live site
SiteMekickcold.live
HostingAS16276 OVH SAS
France, Rouen
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address141.94.214.212
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorInfodefenceguard, Brandpromod2, News
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Mekickcold.live virus?

There are a lot of ways of getting contaminated by the adware that trigger the Mekickcold.live popups tornado. A lion’s part of this computer virus instances is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Freeware may likewise be downloaded from the official website, and the adware is presented as a legitimate bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A lot of users frequently use the unreliable programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, various utilities that are free of cost, or even hacked programs. Every one of these kinds of programs are unsafe, because it is extremely easy to include a Mekickcold.live malware under the guise of part of the license hacking script, or as a component of the self-made algoritm within the Windows optimization tool.

Mekickcold.live popup virus may also be concealed in the promotion somewhere on the unusual web page. Such sites are generally loaded with bright and blinking ads, and their owners often permit any promotions to be placed on their page. Hence, clicking such banners is a risky thing: only the advertisement provider knows what will happen when you click this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you may additionally receive something far more risky, like ransomware or coin miner; the big 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 undesirable programs, like Mekickcold.live popup virus may provoke a wide range of different problems on your personal computer. Distracting is not the only problem – pop-up notifications may show you the ads, where you are offered to get another strange program, or “a effective security tool”. Scareware is often spread under the last motto. Potentially undesirable applications, in turn, may have spyware functions. And it is pretty hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a legit one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and dubious antiviruses, popup-related promotions are also chosen as a distribution way by different trojan viruses, for instance – coin miners. The consequences of actions of such malware is 100% unpleasant, and can cost you several hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not interacting with these ads, they may be clicked by someone who also makes use of your computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the situation can become much more serious, and it will be much harder to deal with it without data and money loss. It is recommended to eliminate the viruses with antivirus applications as soon as possible.

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

The tutorial of Mekickcold.live adware removal consists of 2 sections. First, we need to eliminate the malware, and after that repair the results of its action. The removal task is pretty easy, because it can be performed even with using Microsoft Defender – anti-malware software that is available on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, as a result of its significant resources usage, as well as some defects that may be critical for some types of individuals, Defender is often turned off by the users, so its usage is likely impossible. Furthermore, a wide range of trojan viruses are able to turn off the embedded antivirus. It is far better to make use of the separated program that will not have such weakness.

I would certainly suggest you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven anti-malware tool that will certainly exterminate the malware from your PC and make an invulnerable cover with a Proactive protection function. But let’s take care of Mekickcold.live adware initially.

Removing Mekickcold.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 Mekickcold.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 web browsers are reset, you need to make sure that your web browser will be connected the appropriate DNS while connecting to the web page you need. Create a text file titled “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 problem that makes the things a lot more difficult to fix, especially without the anti-malware software. Most of adware variations that are utilized to show you the Mekickcold.live pop-up advertisements are adjusting the deep browser setups, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to fix your browser settings after your computer was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will crash quickly. In some cases, you will see no crash, however, huge lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 seconds, and then it will be back to the typical, till you try 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 Mekickcold.live Pop-ups?

Name: Mekickcold.live

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