Ourcommonstories pop-up notifications may show up unexpectedly, covering the subject of the page you visited or opening your web browser when you do not wish it to be opened.
Clicking the Ourcommonstories promotion can trigger the injection of different malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the tutorial of Ourcommonstories popups clearing in multiple ways, and also examining your PC for extra malware existence.
What are Ourcommonstories pop-ups?
Ourcommonstories popups are a result of adware activity. Adware is a kind of malware that presents you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click promotions, which produces a massive volume of income for adware suppliers. These ads might have explicit composition, or have a web link to malicious content/website, since adware maintainers have no reason to examine the goodness of the web content they are going to show – their single target is money.
Pop-up marketing itself is a very good, low-priced and very efficient marketing instrument1. It enables the seller to attach the buyers’ interest to their website, as well as the customers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they want to buy. When the customer will receive 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 definitely use this chance and get it. Taking into consideration the incredibly small cost for the popups and their targeting, such a promotion and marketing method is a favorite thing amongst the advertising departments of large online retailers.
Nonetheless, such a profitable strategy could not be missed by virus developers. Potential to show the popup advertisements forcibly to the people of malware invasion is an excellent basis for evil-minded tricks with the popup advertisements. And Ourcommonstories.com promotions is one of hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.
Here is a short info for the Ourcommonstories site
Site | Ourcommonstories.com |
Hosting | AS9002 RETN Limited Netherlands, Amsterdam |
Infection Type | Adware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads |
IP Address | 139.45.197.151 |
Symptoms | Annoying pop-up ads in the right corner. |
Similar behavior | Localdatadefence, News, Funksolutions |
Fix Tool | To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC |
How have I got the Ourcommonstories virus?
There are a lot of methods of becoming infected by the adware that create the Ourcommonstories popups tornado. A lion’s part of this computer virus incidents is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Free software may also be downloaded from the main web page, and the adware is delivered as a legal bundled program.
There is no need to blame yourself. A plenty of people regularly use the uncertain programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, different utilities that are free of cost, or perhaps hacked programs. Every one of these sorts of programs are risky, due to the fact that it is very simple to integrate a Ourcommonstories malware under the guise of part of the license hacking script, or as a part of the self-made algoritm inside of the Windows optimization tool.
Ourcommonstories popup virus can likewise be hidden in the promotion somewhere on the strange website. Such websites are generally filled with intense and blinking ads, and their proprietors generally accept any type of promos to be placed on their page. Thus, clicking on such banners is a shot in the dark: only the advertisement provider knows what will occur when you press this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you can additionally receive something a lot more damaging, like ransomware or coin miner; the substantial share of coin miners distribution is exactly after the malicious advertisements.
Potentially unwanted applications, like Ourcommonstories popup virus may provoke a lot of different problems on your computer. Distracting is not the single problem – pop-up notifications can present you the ads, where you are offered to get one more strange application, or “a amazing anti-malware tool”. Scareware is often distributed with the last slogun. Potentially undesirable applications, in turn, can have spyware functionality. And it is very hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a normal one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and pseudo antiviruses, popup-related promotions are also exploited as a distribution way by various 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 tapping these promotions, they can be clicked by whoever who also makes use of your PC – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the things can become much more serious, and it will be much harder to solve it without data loss. It is recommended to get rid of the viruses with antivirus programs as soon as possible.
How can I get rid of Ourcommonstories pop-up advertisements?
The manual of Ourcommonstories adware elimination contains 2 sections. Initially, we need to get rid of the malware, and afterwards deal with the results of its activity. The elimination process is very simple, due to the fact that it can be performed even with making use of Microsoft Defender – anti-virus software that is available on all computers with Windows 8/10. However, due to its significant resources utilization, as well as some defects that may be serious for some types of users, Defender is often turned off by the users, so its use is most likely impossible. Additionally, different trojan viruses can shut off the embedded antivirus. It is much better to use the separated program that will not have such weakness.
I would certainly suggest you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven antivirus tool that will certainly remove the malware from your computer and make an impenetrable shield with a Proactive protection function. But let’s handle Ourcommonstories adware first.
Removing Ourcommonstories 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.
- 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.
- When the scan is over, you may choose the action for each detected virus. For all files of Ourcommonstories malware the default option is “Delete”. Press “Apply” to finish the malware removal.
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 :
- Open “Settings and more” tab in upper right corner, then find here “Settings” button. In the appeared menu, choose “Reset settings” option :
- 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 :
- Open Menu tab (three strips in upper right corner) and click the “Help” button. In the appeared menu choose “troubleshooting information” :
- In the next screen, find the “Refresh Firefox” option :
After choosing this option, you will see the next message :
If you use Google Chrome
- Open Settings tab, find the “Advanced” button. In the extended tab choose the “Reset and clean up” button :
- In the appeared list, click on the “Restore settings to their original defaults” :
- 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
- 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 :
- 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 correct DNS while connecting to the web page you need. Create a text file named “hosts” on your pc’s desktop, then open it and fill it with the following lines3:
#
# 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 trouble that makes the things much more difficult to fix, especially without the anti-malware software. Most of adware variants that are used to show you the Ourcommonstories pop-up ads are modifying the deep browser setups, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to change your browser settings after your computer was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly crash quickly. In some cases, you will see no crash, however, significant lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 seconds, and after that it will be back to the normal, up until you attempt 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.
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.
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 Ourcommonstories Pop-ups?
Name: Ourcommonstories
Description: Ourcommonstories - 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 Ourcommonstories.com push notifications?” or “why do Ourcommonstories.com pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Ourcommonstories 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
User Review
( votes)References
- More about pop-up ads on Wikipedia.
- GridinSoft Anti-Malware review and also the reasons why I advise it for malware removal.
- Official Microsoft guide for hosts file reset.