How to remove Ouo pop-ups? — Fix Guide

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Ouo pop-up notifications may show up unexpectedly, covering the post of the page you checked or opening your browser when you do not wish it to be opened.

Clicking the Ouo advertisement may cause the injection of various malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the guideline of Ouo popups removal in multiple ways, and also inspecting your PC for other viruses presence.

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What are Ouo pop-ups?

Ouo popups are a result of adware activity. Adware is a kind of malware that suggests you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click ads, which produces a substantial amount of profit for adware suppliers. These promotions might contain explicit information, or have a link to malevolent content/website, considering that adware maintainers have no reason to examine the goodness of the content they are going to show – their single target is cash.

Ouo push notification

Ouo push notification.

Pop-up advertising itself is a good, affordable and also very effective advertising tool1. It enables the seller to link the customers’ interest to their website, and the customers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they wish to purchase. When the customer will get a pop-up notification that the TV set he desires to purchase is available at the online store he/she visited earlier with a 15% discount, one will surely use this chance and get it. Taking into consideration the extremely low cost for the popups and their targeting, such a promotion and marketing tool is a favorite thing among the advertising departments of big online stores.

Nevertheless, such a profitable plan could not be missed by virus developers. Potential to demonstrate the popup advertisements forcibly to the victims of malware invasion is an excellent basis for malicious manipulations with the popup ads. And Ouo.io ads is one of hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a short summary for the Ouo site
SiteOuo.io
HostingAS13335 Cloudflare, Inc.
United States, San Francisco
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address104.22.23.162
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorPayments4u, Repairpreciseoverlythefile, Delookiina
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Ouo virus?

There are a huge amount of ways of getting infected by the adware that create the Ouo popups tornado. A lion’s part of this malware cases is after the free software or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Freeware can likewise be downloaded from the main site, and the adware is presented as a legit bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A number of people regularly utilize the dubious programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, different apps that are free, and even hacked programs. Every one of these kinds of programs are dangerous, due to the fact that it is quite easy to build in a Ouo malware under the guise of part of the license hacking script, or as a part of the self-made algoritm within the Windows optimization tool.

Ouo popup malware may also be hidden in the ad somewhere on the strange web page. Such sites are typically full of bright and blinking advertisements, and their proprietors generally permit any kind of promotions to be posted on their page. Therefore, clicking on such banners is a risky thing: only the ad contractor realizes what will happen when you click this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you can additionally get something a lot more threatening, like ransomware or coin miner; the substantial share of coin miners circulation 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 Ouo pop-up virus can initiate a wide range of different troubles on your personal computer. Distracting is not the only effect – pop-up notifications can display you the banners, where you are offered to get another unknown application, or “a effective security tool”. Scareware is often distributed with the last motto. Potentially undesirable applications, in turn, may have spyware functionality. And it is quite hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a normal one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and dubious antiviruses, popup-related ads are also used as a distribution way by various trojan viruses, for instance – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such malware is 100% unpleasant, and can cost you several hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not tapping these ads, they may be clicked by whoever who also uses 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 information loss. It is recommended to remove the viruses with anti-malware applications as soon as possible.

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

The manual of Ouo adware elimination consists of 2 sections. Initially, we need to eliminate the malware, and after that take care of the results of its activity. The elimination task is very easy, since it can be executed even with using Microsoft Defender – anti-virus tool that is present on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, as a result of its substantial resources utilization, as well as some failures that can be crucial for some groups of individuals, Defender is often disabled by the users, so its usage is probably impossible. In addition, different trojan viruses can turn off the embedded antivirus. It is better to use the separated program that will not have such weakness.

I’d recommend you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven antivirus device that will definitely exterminate the malware from your system and create an impenetrable shield with a Proactive protection function. However, let’s handle Ouo adware initially.

Removing Ouo 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 Ouo 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 make sure that your web browser will connect the correct DNS while connecting to the site you want. Make a text file titled “hosts” on your 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.

Nevertheless, there is one problem that makes the things much more difficult to restore, especially without the anti-malware software. The majority of adware variations that are utilized to show you the Ouo pop-up promotions are changing the deep browser setups, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to fix your browser settings after your computer was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will collapse soon. In some cases, you will see no crash, but large lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 secs, and afterwards it will be back to the normal, up until you try 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 Ouo Pop-ups?

Name: Ouo

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