How to remove Ourscratch pop-ups? — Fix Guide

Ourscratch pop-up notices may appear unexpectedly, covering the subject of the website you went to or opening your browser when you don’t want it to be opened.

Clicking the Ourscratch advertisement may lead to the injection of different malware or unwanted programs. In this article, you will see the guideline of Ourscratch popups clearing in multiple ways, and also inspecting your personal computer for other malware presence.

It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!

Removing Ourscratch 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.

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What are Ourscratch pop-ups?

Ourscratch popups are an outcome of adware presence. Adware is a type of malware that suggests you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which creates a large volume of profit for adware suppliers. These ads may have sometimes shocking material, or have a web link to malicious content/website, due to the fact that adware maintainers have no reason to examine the goodness of the material they are going to show – their solitary target is cash.

Ourscratch push notification.

Pop-up marketing itself is a very good, low-cost and also really successful advertising method¹. It permits the seller to link the buyers’ attention to their website, and the customers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they wish to purchase. When the consumer will get a pop-up alert that the TV set he wishes to purchase is available at the online shop he/she saw earlier with a 15% discount, one will undoubtedly use this possibility and buy it. Taking into consideration the very small cost for the popups and their targeting, such a marketing tool is a much-loved thing amidst the marketing teams of large internet stores.

Nonetheless, such a profitable scheme could not be missed by malware creators. Ability to demonstrate the popup advertisements by force to the people of malware attack is a great basis for malicious tricks with the popup promotions. And Ourscratch.fun advertisements is among hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a info for the Ourscratch site

How have I got the Ourscratch virus?

There are a lot of methods of becoming infected by the adware that lead to the Ourscratch popups storm. A lion’s part of this virus cases is after the free software or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Freeware may additionally be downloaded from the official site, and the adware is offered as a legit bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A lot of users regularly make use of the unreliable programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, various tools that are free, or perhaps hacked programs. All of these kinds of programs are unsafe, since it is very easy to integrate a Ourscratch malware under the cover of part of the license hacking script, or as a component of the self-made algoritm within the Windows optimization tool.

Ourscratch popup virus can also be hidden in the ad somewhere on the strange site. Such web pages are in most cases loaded with colorful and blinking advertisements, and their proprietors typically accept any type of promotions to be posted on their web page. For this reason, clicking such banners is a shot in the dark: only the advertisement contractor realizes what will occur when you click this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you may also receive something far more threatening, like ransomware or coin miner; the large share of coin miners distribution is exactly after the malicious ads.

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

Potentially undesirable applications, like Ourscratch pop-up virus may cause a lot of different troubles on your computer. Distracting is not the only problem – pop-up notifications may present you the ads, where you are offered to download one more unknown program, or “a effective security tool”. Scareware is often distributed with the use of the last motto. Potentially unwanted programs, in turn, may have spyware functions. And it is quite hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a legit one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and pseudo antiviruses, popup-related advertisements are also chosen as a spreading method 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 advertisements, they can be clicked by someone who also uses your PC – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the situation may become much more serious, and it will be much harder to solve it without data loss. It is recommended to eliminate the viruses with antivirus applications as soon as possible.

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

The manual of Ourscratch adware removal contains 2 parts. First, we need to deal with the malware, and after that correct the results of its action. The removal process is really easy, because it can be done even with the use of Microsoft Defender – security software that is present on all computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, due to its huge resources utilization, as well as some failures that may be serious for some categories of individuals, Defender is oftentimes disabled by the users, so its usage is probably impossible. What’s more, various trojan viruses are able to turn off the embedded antivirus. It is better to use the separated program that will not have such exposures.

I’d recommend you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware² – a well-proven security tool that will undoubtedly remove the malware from your computer and also create an impenetrable shield with a Proactive protection function. But let’s handle Ourscratch adware initially.

Removing Ourscratch 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 Ourscratch 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 :

1. Open “Settings and more” tab in upper right corner, then find here “Settings” button. In the appeared menu, choose “Reset settings” option :

2. 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. In the next screen, find the “Refresh Firefox” option :

After choosing this option, you will see the next message :

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 be connected the correct DNS while connecting to the site you want. Create a text file named “hosts” on your desktop, after that open it and fill it with the following text³:

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 issue that makes the things much harder to fix, specifically without the anti-malware software. Most of adware variations that are utilized to show you the Ourscratch pop-up advertisements are altering the deep browser settings, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to change your browser settings after your machine was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly collapse soon. In some cases, you will see no crash, but huge lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 secs, and after that 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.

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 Ourscratch Pop-ups?

Name: Ourscratch

Description: Ourscratch - 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 Ourscratch.fun push notifications?” or “why do Ourscratch.fun pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Ourscratch 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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1. More about pop-up advertisements on Wikipedia.
2. GridinSoft Anti-Malware review and the reasons why I recommend it for malware removal.
3. Official Microsoft guide for hosts file reset.