Remove News-kotofa.cc Pop-up Virus — How to Remove?

Written by Wilbur Woodham
News-kotofa.cc pop-up notices can appear out of the blue, covering the post of the site you visited or opening your web browser when you do not desire it to be opened.

Clicking the News-kotofa.cc promotion can cause the injection of different malware or unwanted programs. In this guide, you will see the tutorial of News-kotofa.cc popups removal in a couple of ways, and also examining your PC for additional malware existence.

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What are News-kotofa.cc pop-ups?

News-kotofa.cc popups are a consequence of adware activity. Adware is a sort of malware that presents you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which produces a large volume of profit for adware distributors. These ads may contain explicit information, or have a link to harmful content/website, because adware maintainers have no reason to examine the goodness of the content they are going to reveal – their solitary target is money.

News-kotofa.cc push notification

News-kotofa.cc push notification.

Pop-up marketing itself is an excellent, affordable and also extremely productive advertising instrument1. It permits the vendor to link the buyers’ attention to their site, as well as the customers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they want to purchase. When the customer will receive a pop-up alert that the TV set he wishes to buy is provided at the online shop he/she saw previously with a 15% discount, one will surely use this chance and buy it. Considering the incredibly small cost for the popups and their targeting, such a promotion and marketing method is a much-loved thing amidst the advertising departments of large online stores.

Nonetheless, such a successful system could not be missed by virus creators. Potential to demonstrate the popup advertisements by force to the people of malware invasion is a great basis for malicious adjustments with the popup advertisements. And News-kotofa.cc promotions is just one of hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a short info for the News-kotofa.cc site
SiteNews-kotofa.cc
HostingAS63023 GTHost
United Kingdom, London
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address149.7.16.246
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorRencesprin, Littlementw, Captchawall
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the News-kotofa.cc virus?

There are a number of ways of getting infected by the adware that trigger the News-kotofa.cc popups storm. A lion’s part of this virus incidents is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Free software can likewise be downloaded from the official website, and the adware is supplied as a legitimate bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A plenty of users regularly utilize the dubious programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, various apps that are free, or even hacked programs. Every one of these kinds of applications are unsafe, due to the fact that it is very simple to include a News-kotofa.cc 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.

News-kotofa.cc popup malware may also be concealed in the advertisement somewhere on the unusual web page. Such websites are usually filled with bright and blinking ads, and their owners generally approve any kind of promotions to be posted on their web page. Thus, clicking on such banners is a risky thing: only the ad contractor realizes what will occur when you press this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you may additionally get something a lot more threatening, 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 applications, like News-kotofa.cc popup virus may provoke a lot of different problems on your computer. Distracting is not the only problem – pop-up notifications can display you the advertisements, where you are offered to get another unknown program, or “a amazing security tool”. Scareware is usually spread with the use of the last motto. Potentially undesirable programs, in turn, may have spyware functions. And it is pretty hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a normal one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and fake antiviruses, popup-related ads are also used as a spreading method by various trojan viruses, for example – 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 tapping these advertisements, they can be clicked by whoever 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 solve it without information loss. It is recommended to remove the viruses with antivirus programs as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of News-kotofa.cc pop-up advertisements?

The guide of News-kotofa.cc adware elimination includes 2 sections. First, we need to deal with the malware, and after that repair the results of its action. The removal task is quite easy, since it can be done even with making use of Microsoft Defender – anti-malware program that is available on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. However, because of its significant resources consumption, as well as some failures that may be pivotal for some categories of individuals, Defender is oftentimes turned off by the users, so its utilization is probably impossible. Additionally, various trojan viruses have the ability to shut off the embedded antivirus. It is far better to make use of the separated program that will not have such weakness.

I’d advise you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven antivirus tool that will surely remove the malware from your computer and make an invulnerable cover with a Proactive protection function. But let’s manage News-kotofa.cc adware first.

Removing News-kotofa.cc 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 News-kotofa.cc 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 web browser will be connected the right 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 much harder to repair, particularly without the anti-malware program. A lot of adware variants that are used to show you the News-kotofa.cc pop-up ads are modifying the deep browser settings, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to fix your browser settings after your PC 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 pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 seconds, and then it will be back to the typical, until 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 News-kotofa.cc Pop-ups?

Name: News-kotofa.cc

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