News-themes Ads Removal Guide — How to Fix It?

Written by Wilbur Woodham
News-themes pop-up notices can show up out of the blue, covering the content of the page you went to or opening your browser when you don’t need it to be opened.

Clicking on the News-themes promotion may lead to the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this article, you will see the guideline of News-themes popups clearing in multiple methods, as well as examining your system for other viruses presence.

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What are News-themes pop-ups?

News-themes popups are a result of adware presence. Adware is a sort of malware that shows you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click promotions, which generates a massive amount of revenue for adware distributors. These promotions might consist of sometimes shocking material, or have a link to harmful content/website, since adware maintainers have no purpose to examine the goodness of the content they are going to reveal – their solitary target is cash.

News-themes push notification

News-themes push notification.

Pop-up marketing itself is an excellent, low-priced and really efficient advertising tool1. It allows the seller to attach the buyers’ attention to their site, as well as the buyers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they want to buy. When the person will receive a pop-up notification that the TV set he likes to buy is offered at the online store he/she checked out previously with a 15% discount, one will definitely use this opportunity and purchase it. Considering the extremely low cost for the popups and their targeting, such a promotion and marketing method is a much-loved thing amongst the marketing departments of large internet stores.

Nonetheless, such a rewarding scheme could not be missed by virus developers. Option to demonstrate the popup advertisements forcibly to the targets of malware attack is an ideal basis for malicious adjustments with the popup ads. And News-themes.com promotions is just one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a short details for the News-themes site
SiteNews-themes.com
HostingAS60781 LeaseWeb Netherlands B.V.
Netherlands, Amsterdam
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address213.227.149.216
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorAidraiphejpb, Thewebpartner, Re05
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the News-themes virus?

There are a huge amount of ways of getting infected by the adware that cause the News-themes popups storm. A lion’s part of this computer virus incidents is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Free software may additionally be downloaded from the official web page, and the adware is offered as a legal bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A plenty of users often make use of the uncertain programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, a wide range of tools that are free of cost, or perhaps hacked programs. Every one of these sorts of applications are unsafe, since it is extremely easy to integrate a News-themes malware under the guise of part of the license hacking script, or as a part of the self-made algoritm inside of the Windows optimization tool.

News-themes popup malware may likewise be hidden in the promotion somewhere on the unusual site. Such sites are in most cases full of colorful and blinking ads, and their owners often accept any type of promos to be placed on their web page. Hence, clicking on such banners is a shot in the dark: only the ad provider realizes what will occur when you click this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you can additionally receive something much more damaging, like ransomware or coin miner; the substantial share of coin miners circulation is exactly after the malicious advertisements.

People dislike popups

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

Potentially unwanted programs, like News-themes pop-up virus may initiate a variety of different problems on your PC. Distracting is not the single effect – pop-ups can present you the ads, where you are offered to get one more dubious application, or “a perfect security tool”. Scareware is usually distributed with the last slogun. Potentially undesirable programs, in turn, may have spyware functions. And it is quite hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a good one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and dubious antiviruses, popup-related promotions are also used as a spreading method by various trojan viruses, for instance – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such viruses is 100% unpleasant, and can cost you several hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not tapping these banners, 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 data and money loss. It is recommended to get rid of the viruses with anti-malware applications as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of News-themes pop-up advertisements?

The manual of News-themes adware removal includes 2 sections. Initially, we need to exterminate the malware, and afterwards repair the results of its action. The removal task is really simple, due to the fact that it may be done even with using Microsoft Defender – anti-virus tool that is present on all computers with Windows 8/10. Nonetheless, as a result of its significant resources usage, as well as some bugs that may be crucial for some types of users, Defender is oftentimes turned off by the users, so its usage is likely impossible. What’s more, a wide range of trojan viruses have the ability to switch off the embedded antivirus. It is much better to use the separated program that will not have such weakness.

I’d recommend you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven antivirus device that will surely exterminate the viruses from your system and also make an impenetrable cover with a Proactive protection feature. But let’s deal with News-themes adware first.

Removing News-themes 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-themes 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 accurate DNS while connecting to the site you need. Create a text file named “hosts” on your computer’s desktop, then 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 the things a lot more difficult to fix, particularly without the anti-malware program. The majority of adware versions that are used to show you the News-themes pop-up ads are modifying 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 collapse soon. Sometimes, you will see no crash, however, huge lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 secs, and afterwards it will be back to the typical, 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 News-themes Pop-ups?

Name: News-themes

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