Remove Muinefood Pop-up Ads — How to Fix Gude

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Muinefood pop-up notifications can show up unexpectedly, covering the content of the site you went to or opening your web browser when you do not wish it to be opened.

Clicking the Muinefood promotion may cause the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the manual of Muinefood popups clearing in several ways, and also inspecting your personal computer for additional viruses presence.

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What are Muinefood pop-ups?

Muinefood popups are an effect of adware activity. Adware is a sort of malware that presents you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which generates a massive volume of earnings for adware representatives. These ads may have sometimes shocking composition, or have a link to malevolent content/website, considering that adware maintainers have no purpose to inspect the goodness of the content they are going to show – their solitary target is money.

Muinefood push notification

Muinefood push notification.

Pop-up promotions itself is an excellent, affordable and also really successful marketing instrument1. It enables the seller to attach the buyers’ attention to their site, as well as the buyers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they wish to buy. When the person will get a pop-up alert that the TV set he likes to buy is available at the online store he/she saw previously with a 15% discount, one will surely use this chance and purchase it. Taking into consideration the exceptionally low cost for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising tool is a favourite thing amidst the advertising departments of large online stores.

Nonetheless, such a rewarding plan could not be missed by malware creators. Option to demonstrate the popup ads forcibly to the people of malware attack is a perfect basis for malicious adjustments with the popup promotions. And Muinefood.xyz advertisements is among hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a short summary for the Muinefood site
SiteMuinefood.xyz
HostingAS15317 Serverel Inc.
United States, San Jose
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address173.214.240.15
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorFoodskitchen1, Ethistory1, News
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Muinefood virus?

There are a plenty of methods of becoming contaminated by the adware that trigger the Muinefood popups tornado. A lion’s part of this malware incidents is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Free software can additionally be downloaded from the official site, and the adware is supplied as a legitimate bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A plenty of individuals often work with the uncertain programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, a wide range of tools that are free of cost, and even hacked programs. All of these kinds of software are risky, since it is quite simple to integrate a Muinefood malware under the cover of part of the license hacking script, or as a part of the self-made algoritm within the Windows optimization tool.

Muinefood popup malware can also 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 often approve any type of promos to be placed on their page. For this reason, clicking on such banners is a risky thing: only the ad contractor realizes what will occur when you press this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you may also receive something a lot more hazardous, 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 unwanted applications, like Muinefood popup virus can initiate a lot of problems on your PC. Distracting is not the single effect – pop-ups can display you the promotions, where you are offered to get another unknown program, or “a effective security tool”. Scareware is usually spread with the last slogun. Potentially undesirable programs, in turn, may have spyware functions. And it is very hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a normal one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and fake antiviruses, popup-related ads are also exploited as a spreading method by various trojan viruses, for instance – coin miners. The consequences of actions of such viruses is 100% unwanted, and can cost you hundreds or even thousands of dollars. And even if you are not clicking these ads, they may be clicked by someone who also makes use of your personal computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the things can become much more serious, and it will be much harder to deal with it without information loss. It is recommended to wipe out the viruses with antivirus applications as soon as possible.

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

The tutorial of Muinefood adware clearing consists of 2 sections. Initially, we need to deal with the malware, and after that correct the consequences of its activity. The removal process is quite simple, since it may be done even with the use of Microsoft Defender – security tool that is present on all computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, because of its large resources utilization, along with some defects that can be critical for some types of individuals, Defender is often turned off by the users, so its utilization is most likely impossible. In addition, a wide range of trojan viruses are capable to shut off the embedded antivirus. It is much better to use the separated program that will not have such weakness.

I’d advise you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven anti-malware device that will surely exterminate the malware from your computer and also create an impenetrable cover with a Proactive protection feature. However, let’s handle Muinefood adware initially.

Removing Muinefood 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 Muinefood 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 be connected the correct DNS while connecting to the website you need. Create a text file titled “hosts” on your desktop, then open it and fill it with the following content3:

# 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 problem that makes things much harder to fix, particularly without the anti-malware program. A lot of adware versions that are used to show you the Muinefood pop-up ads 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 infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly collapse quickly. Sometimes, you will see no crash, but large lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 secs, and after that it will be back to the typical, till you attempt to open settings once more.

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 Muinefood Pop-ups?

Name: Muinefood

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