Remove OnlineFreeNews Pop-up Ads — How to Fix Gude

Written by Wilbur Woodham
OnlineFreeNews pop-up notices may appear out of the blue, covering the content of the site you explored or opening your web browser when you don’t want it to be opened.

Clicking the OnlineFreeNews ad may result in the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this guide, you will see the manual of OnlineFreeNews popups clearing in several ways, as well as checking your computer for additional malware existence.

GridinSoft Anti-Malware Review
It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!
Removing OnlineFreeNews manually may take hours and may damage your PC in the process. I recommend you to download GridinSoft Anti-Malware for threats removal. Allows to complete scan and cure your PC during the trial period.
Gridinsoft Anti-Malware 6-day trial available.
EULA | Privacy Policy | 10% Off Coupon
Subscribe to our Telegram channel to be the first to know about news and our exclusive materials on information security.

What are OnlineFreeNews pop-ups?

OnlineFreeNews popups are an outcome of adware action. Adware is a kind of malware that presents you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click promotions, which generates a massive amount of profit for adware suppliers. These ads might include explicit composition, or have a link to malevolent content/website, because adware maintainers have no purpose to inspect the goodness of the material they are going to show – their single target is cash.

OnlineFreeNews push notification

OnlineFreeNews push notification.

Pop-up promotions itself is an excellent, affordable and also extremely effective advertising tool1. It allows the seller to link the customers’ interest to their site, as well as the buyers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they want to purchase. When the consumer will receive a pop-up alert that the TV set he wishes to buy is offered at the online store he/she saw previously with a 15% price cut, one will definitely use this possibility and purchase it. Taking into consideration the extremely low cost for the popups and their targeting, such a promotion and marketing tool is a much-loved thing amongst the advertising teams of big online stores.

Nonetheless, such a profitable scheme could not be missed by malware creators. Ability to show the popup advertisements forcibly to the people of malware attack is a great basis for evil-minded manipulations with the popup promotions. And Onlinefreenews.xyz promotions is among hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a info for the OnlineFreeNews site
Site Onlinefreenews.xyz
Hosting AS15317 Serverel Inc.
United States, San Jose
Infection Type Adware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address 173.214.250.52
Symptoms Annoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behavior Utblondom, Remolish, News
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the OnlineFreeNews virus?

There are a plenty of methods of getting contaminated by the adware that lead to the OnlineFreeNews popups tornado. A lion’s part of this virus incidents is after the free software or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Free software may also be downloaded from the main web page, and the adware is provided as a legal bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A huge amount of people regularly use the unreliable programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, different apps that are free of cost, or perhaps hacked programs. All of these types of applications are risky, since it is extremely simple to include a OnlineFreeNews malware under the cover of part of the license hacking script, or as a part of the self-made algoritm inside of the Windows optimization tool.

OnlineFreeNews popup virus may additionally be hidden in the promotion somewhere on the unusual website. Such sites are generally full of intense and blinking advertisements, and their proprietors typically approve any type of promotions to be published on their page. Hence, clicking on such banners is a shot in the dark: only the advertisement contractor realizes what will happen when you press this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you can likewise get something far 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 unwanted programs, like OnlineFreeNews popup virus may provoke a lot of troubles on your PC. Distracting is not the single effect – pop-up notifications can present you the banners, where you are offered to get another dubious application, or “a perfect anti-malware tool”. Scareware is usually spread with the last slogun. Potentially undesirable programs, in turn, may have spyware functionality. And it is very hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a good one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and dubious antiviruses, popup-related promotions are also chosen as a distribution method by different trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such malware is 100% unpleasant, and can cost you hundreds or even thousands of dollars. And even if you are not interacting with these ads, they can be clicked by whoever who also makes use of your personal 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 and money loss. It is recommended to wipe out the viruses with antivirus applications as soon as possible.

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

The manual of OnlineFreeNews adware removal consists of 2 parts. First, we need to get rid of the malware, and afterwards fix the consequences of its action. The removal task is pretty simple, since it may be performed even with making use of Microsoft Defender – anti-virus tool that is available on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, because of its significant resources consumption, along with some bugs that may be critical for some categories of individuals, Defender is oftentimes turned off by the users, so its usage is likely impossible. In addition, a wide range of trojan viruses are capable to shut off the embedded antivirus. It is far better to use the separated program that will not have such exposures.

I would certainly suggest you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven anti-malware device that will definitely eliminate the malware from your computer and create an invulnerable shield with a Proactive protection feature. However, let’s deal with OnlineFreeNews adware first.

Removing OnlineFreeNews 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 OnlineFreeNews 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 definitely be connected the accurate DNS while connecting to the website you want. Create a text file titled “hosts” on your desktop, after that open it and fill it with the following text3:

# 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.

However, there is one issue that makes the things a lot more difficult to restore, particularly without the anti-malware software. A lot of adware variants that are used to show you the OnlineFreeNews pop-up advertisements are modifying the deep browser setups, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to fix your browser settings after your system was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will collapse 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 try 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 OnlineFreeNews Pop-ups?

Name: OnlineFreeNews

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

Sending
User Review
3.83 (6 votes)
Comments Rating 0 (0 reviews)

References

  1. More about pop-up ads on Wikipedia.
  2. GridinSoft Anti-Malware overview and also the reasons why I suggest it for malware elimination.
  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.

Leave a Reply

Sending