Remove News-xehola Pop-up Virus — How to Remove?

Written by Wilbur Woodham
News-xehola pop-up alerts can appear out of the blue, covering the content of the page you explored or opening your browser when you do not need it to be opened.

Clicking on the News-xehola promotion may lead to the injection of different malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the guideline of News-xehola popups removal in multiple methods, as well as checking your system for extra viruses presence.

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What are News-xehola pop-ups?

News-xehola popups are a consequence of adware activity. Adware is a type of malware that shows you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click ads, which generates a significant volume of profit for adware suppliers. These promotions may include sometimes shocking information, or have a web link to malicious content/website, considering that adware maintainers have no purpose to check the goodness of the web content they are going to show – their solitary target is cash.

News-xehola push notification

News-xehola push notification.

Pop-up advertising itself is a good, low-priced and extremely efficient marketing instrument1. It enables the seller to attach the customers’ interest to their site, as well as the buyers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they intend to buy. When the consumer will receive a pop-up notification that the TV set he wishes to purchase is provided at the online store he/she checked out previously with a 15% discount, one will certainly use this chance and buy it. Taking into consideration the exceptionally low price for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising method is a much-loved thing amongst the marketing departments of large online sellers.

Nonetheless, such a rewarding scheme could not be missed by virus developers. Option to show the popup advertisements by force to the victims of malware attack is an excellent basis for malevolent adjustments with the popup ads. And News-xehola.com ads is just one of hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a details for the News-xehola site
Site News-xehola.com
Hosting AS63023 GTHost
Germany, Frankfurt am Main
Infection Type Adware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address 193.108.118.121
Symptoms Annoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behavior News, News, Guesswhatnews
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the News-xehola virus?

There are a plenty of ways of becoming infected by the adware that lead to the News-xehola popups tornado. A lion’s part of this malware cases is after the free software or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Freeware can additionally be downloaded from the official website, and the adware is offered as a legit bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A lot of individuals often make use of the dubious programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, a wide range of tools that are free, or even hacked programs. Every one of these kinds of applications are unsafe, since it is extremely simple to integrate a News-xehola 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-xehola popup malware may additionally be hidden in the ad somewhere on the odd website. Such sites are typically full of bright and blinking advertisements, and their owners often approve any kind of promotions to be posted on their page. For this reason, clicking such banners is a risky thing: only the ad provider knows what will occur when you click this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you may additionally receive something much more unsafe, 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 undesirable programs, like News-xehola pop-up virus may provoke a lot of different problems on your computer. Distracting is not the only problem – pop-up notifications may present you the advertisements, where you are offered to get another strange program, or “a perfect anti-malware tool”. Scareware is usually spread with the use of the last motto. Potentially unwanted programs, in turn, can have spyware functionality. And it is pretty hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a normal one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and fake antiviruses, popup-related advertisements are also exploited as a spreading way by various trojan viruses, for instance – coin miners. The consequences of actions of such viruses is 100% unpleasant, and can cost you hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not interacting with these banners, they can be clicked by whoever who also uses 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 loss. It is recommended to wipe out the viruses with antivirus programs as soon as possible.

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

The tutorial of News-xehola adware elimination contains 2 sections. First, we need to get rid of the malware, and then correct the effects of its action. The elimination procedure is very easy, because it may be executed even with making use of Microsoft Defender – anti-malware program that is present on all computers with Windows 8/10. However, due to its large resources utilization, as well as some failures that may be critical for some kinds of individuals, Defender is frequently disabled by the users, so its usage is most likely impossible. Moreover, various trojan viruses have the ability to shut off the embedded antivirus. It is much better to use the separated program that will not have such vulnerabilities.

I’d suggest you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven antivirus tool that will undoubtedly remove the viruses from your personal computer and also make an invulnerable cover with a Proactive protection feature. But let’s take care of News-xehola adware initially.

Removing News-xehola 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-xehola 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 appropriate DNS while connecting to the site you want. Create a text file named “hosts” on your desktop, after that 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.

Nonetheless, there is one problem that makes the things a lot harder to fix, especially without the anti-malware program. A lot of adware variations that are used to show you the News-xehola 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 computer was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will crash quickly. Sometimes, you will see no crash, but significant lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 seconds, and afterwards it will be back to the typical, up until you attempt to open settings one more time.

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-xehola Pop-ups?

Name: News-xehola

Description: News-xehola - 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-xehola.com push notifications?” or “why do News-xehola.com pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with News-xehola 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 advertisements on Wikipedia.
  2. GridinSoft Anti-Malware overview and also 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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