Online-guard Ads Removal Guide — How to Fix It?

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Online-guard pop-up alerts may show up unexpectedly, covering the post of the site you went to or opening your browser when you don’t want it to be opened.

Clicking on the Online-guard ad may trigger the injection of various malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the manual of Online-guard popups clearing in a couple of manners, as well as examining your computer for other viruses existence.

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What are Online-guard pop-ups?

Online-guard popups are an effect of adware activity. Adware is a sort of malware that shows you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click promotions, which generates a large amount of income for adware suppliers. These promotions might include sometimes shocking content, or have a link to malicious content/website, due to the fact that adware maintainers have no reason to examine the goodness of the web content they are going to reveal – their solitary target is money.

Online-guard push notification

Online-guard push notification.

Pop-up marketing itself is a good, cheap and also extremely efficient advertising method1. It enables the vendor to link the customers’ attention to their website, and the customers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they want to purchase. When the consumer will get a pop-up notification that the TV set he likes to buy is available at the online shop he/she saw earlier with a 15% price cut, one will certainly use this possibility and buy it. Taking into consideration the incredibly low price for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising and marketing instrument is a favourite thing among the marketing departments of huge online sellers.

However, such a successful system could not be missed by virus creators. Option to show the popup advertisements by force to the people of malware attack is an excellent basis for malevolent tricks with the popup ads. And Online-guard.com promotions is one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a summary for the Online-guard
Site Online-guard.com
Hosting AS13335 Cloudflare, Inc.
United States, San Francisco
Infection Type Adware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address 188.114.97.3
Symptoms Annoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behavior Win, Windows, News
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Online-guard virus?

There are a plenty of methods of getting infected by the adware that result in the Online-guard popups storm. A lion’s part of this malware instances is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Free software may likewise be downloaded from the main site, and the adware is delivered as a legal bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A plenty of users oftentimes make use of the uncertain programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, various apps that are free of cost, or perhaps hacked programs. All of these kinds of programs are unsafe, due to the fact that it is very simple to build in a Online-guard 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.

Online-guard popup malware may additionally be concealed in the ad somewhere on the odd website. Such websites are usually filled with colorful and blinking ads, and their owners often accept any kind of promos to be placed on their web page. Therefore, clicking on such banners is a shot in the dark: only the ad provider realizes what will occur when you click this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you may likewise receive something much more risky, like ransomware or coin miner; the substantial share of coin miners distribution is exactly after the malicious promotions.

People dislike popups

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

Potentially undesirable applications, like Online-guard pop-up virus can initiate a variety of troubles on your personal computer. Distracting is not the only effect – pop-ups can show you the advertisements, where you are offered to download one more unknown program, or “a perfect security tool”. Scareware is often spread with the use of the last slogun. Potentially unwanted programs, in turn, may have spyware functionality. And it is quite hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a legit one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and pseudo antiviruses, popup-related promotions are also chosen as a distribution method by various trojan viruses, for instance – coin miners. The consequences of actions of such malware is 100% unpleasant, and can cost you hundreds or even thousands of dollars. And even if you are not tapping these promotions, they can be clicked by someone who also makes use of your PC – 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 get rid of the viruses with anti-malware applications as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Online-guard pop-up advertisements?

The manual of Online-guard adware removal consists of 2 parts. First, we need to remove the malware, and then fix the results of its activity. The elimination procedure is really easy, since it can be executed even with making use of Microsoft Defender – anti-virus program that is available on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, due to its substantial resources usage, along with some problems that can be crucial for some kinds of individuals, Defender is often disabled by the users, so its use is probably impossible. Moreover, 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 vulnerabilities.

I’d recommend you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven anti-malware device that will certainly erase the malware from your computer and create an invulnerable shield with a Proactive protection feature. But let’s handle Online-guard adware initially.

Removing Online-guard 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 Online-guard 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 browser will connect the correct DNS while connecting to the web page you want. Make a text file titled “hosts” on your computer’s 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.

Nonetheless, there is one trouble that makes things a lot harder to fix, particularly without the anti-malware software. A lot of adware versions that are used to show you the Online-guard pop-up promotions are adjusting the deep browser configurations, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to fix your browser settings after your machine was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly crash quickly. In some cases, you will see no crash, but large lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 seconds, and then it will be back to the normal, up until 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 Online-guard Pop-ups?

Name: Online-guard

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