Remove Open4u.co.uk Pop-up Ads — How to Fix Gude

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Open4u.co.uk pop-up notifications can show up out of the blue, covering the material of the page you explored or opening your web browser when you don’t need it to be opened.

Clicking on the Open4u.co.uk promotion may result in the injection of various malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the manual of Open4u.co.uk popups removal in several methods, as well as examining your PC for extra viruses presence.

GridinSoft Anti-Malware Review
It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!
Removing Open4u.co.uk 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 Open4u.co.uk pop-ups?

Open4u.co.uk popups are an outcome of adware presence. Adware is a kind of malware that presents you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which generates a substantial amount of revenue for adware distributors. These ads might contain explicit information, or have a link to malicious content/website, considering that adware maintainers have no reason to examine the goodness of the material they are going to show – their solitary target is cash.

Open4u.co.uk push notification

Open4u.co.uk push notification.

Pop-up promotions itself is an excellent, low-cost and extremely successful marketing solution1. It allows the vendor to link the buyers’ interest to their website, and the customers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they wish to purchase. When the person will receive a pop-up alert that the TV set he likes to purchase is offered at the online shop he/she saw previously with a 15% price cut, one will definitely use this possibility and buy it. Taking into consideration the extremely low cost for the popups and their targeting, such a promotion and marketing tool is a favorite thing amongst the marketing departments of large internet sellers.

However, such a profitable system could not be missed by virus developers. Ability to demonstrate the popup advertisements forcibly to the people of malware invasion is a great basis for malicious manipulations with the popup promotions. And Open4u.co.uk promotions is just one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a short info for the Open4u.co.uk site
SiteOpen4u.co.uk
HostingAS59729 ITL LLC
Bulgaria, Sofia
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address91.215.155.10
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorEmalibble, Unarbokor, Smilebox
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Open4u.co.uk virus?

There are a number of ways of becoming contaminated by the adware that create the Open4u.co.uk popups storm. A lion’s part of this virus incidents is after the free software or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Free software can also be downloaded from the official site, and the adware is offered as a legit bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A number of users regularly use the unreliable programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, a wide range of apps that are free, and even hacked programs. Every one of these types of software are dangerous, since it is very simple to build in a Open4u.co.uk 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.

Open4u.co.uk popup virus may additionally be hidden in the ad somewhere on the odd site. Such sites are usually filled with bright and blinking ads, and their owners typically approve any kind of promotions to be published on their page. Thus, clicking on such banners is a risky thing: only the advertisement provider knows what will occur when you click this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you can also receive something a lot more unsafe, like ransomware or coin miner; the big share of coin miners circulation 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 Open4u.co.uk popup virus can provoke a lot of different troubles on your personal computer. Distracting is not the single problem – pop-up notifications can display you the advertisements, where you are offered to download one more dubious program, or “a effective anti-malware tool”. Scareware is usually distributed under the last motto. Potentially unwanted programs, in turn, can have spyware functions. And it is pretty hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a good one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and pseudo antiviruses, popup-related ads are also used as a distribution way by different trojan viruses, for instance – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such viruses is 100% unwanted, and can cost you hundreds or even thousands of dollars. And even if you are not interacting with these promotions, they may 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 deal with it without data and money loss. It is recommended to eliminate the viruses with anti-malware programs as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Open4u.co.uk pop-up advertisements?

The guide of Open4u.co.uk adware removal includes 2 parts. First, we need to get rid of the malware, and after that deal with the results of its action. The elimination task is really simple, since it may be performed even with using Microsoft Defender – anti-virus tool that is available on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nonetheless, because of its significant resources consumption, along with some problems that may be pivotal for some kinds of individuals, Defender is often disabled by the users, so its usage is probably impossible. What’s more, different trojan viruses have the ability to switch off the embedded antivirus. It is much better to make use of the separated program that will not have such exposures.

I would certainly recommend you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven security tool that will certainly wipe out the malware from your PC and make an impenetrable shield with a Proactive protection function. However, let’s deal with Open4u.co.uk adware first.

Removing Open4u.co.uk 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 Open4u.co.uk 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 web browsers are reset, you need to ensure that your browser will definitely connect the right DNS while connecting to the website you need. Make a text file titled “hosts” on your pc’s desktop, then 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.

Nonetheless, there is one issue that makes the things much harder to repair, especially without the anti-malware program. Most of adware variations that are used to show you the Open4u.co.uk 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 system was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will collapse soon. Sometimes, you will see no crash, however, huge lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 secs, and afterwards it will be back to the normal, till 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 Open4u.co.uk Pop-ups?

Name: Open4u.co.uk

Description: Open4u.co.uk - 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 Open4u.co.uk push notifications?” or “why do Open4u.co.uk pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Open4u.co.uk 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
3.5 (4 votes)
Comments Rating 0 (0 reviews)

References

  1. More about pop-up ads on Wikipedia.
  2. GridinSoft Anti-Malware review and the reasons why I suggest 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.

Leave a Reply

Sending