How to remove Ourtopstories.com pop-ups? — Fix Guide

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Ourtopstories.com pop-up alerts may appear unexpectedly, covering the material of the site you went to or opening your browser when you don’t want it to be opened.

Clicking the Ourtopstories.com promotion can cause the injection of various malware or unwanted programs. In this article, you will see the guide of Ourtopstories.com popups clearing in a couple of ways, as well as inspecting your system for extra viruses existence.

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What are Ourtopstories.com pop-ups?

Ourtopstories.com popups are a consequence of adware presence. Adware is a type of malware that shows you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which creates a major amount of income for adware suppliers. These ads might consist of sometimes shocking information, or have a web link to harmful content/website, considering that adware maintainers have no reason to examine the goodness of the web content they are going to reveal – their solitary target is money.

Ourtopstories.com push notification

Ourtopstories.com push notification.

Pop-up advertising itself is a very good, affordable and extremely effective advertising solution1. It enables the vendor to attach the customers’ interest to their site, and the buyers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they wish to purchase. When the customer will get a pop-up alert that the TV set he wishes to purchase is available at the online store he/she checked out previously with a 15% price cut, one will undoubtedly use this chance and buy it. Considering the very low cost for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising method is a much-loved thing among the advertising departments of big online retail stores.

However, such a successful scheme could not be missed by virus creators. Option to demonstrate the popup ads by force to the victims of malware invasion is a perfect basis for malicious manipulations with the popup promotions. And Ourtopstories.com advertisements is just one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a short info for the Ourtopstories.com
SiteOurtopstories.com
HostingAS9002 RETN Limited
Netherlands, Amsterdam
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address139.45.197.146
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorNfgmyassion, Perienfcefot, 24
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Ourtopstories.com virus?

There are a huge amount of ways of getting infected by the adware that result in the Ourtopstories.com popups storm. A lion’s part of this virus instances is after the free software or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Freeware can additionally be downloaded from the main site, and the adware is delivered as a legitimate bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A lot of users often utilize the uncertain programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, various tools that are free, or perhaps hacked programs. Every one of these sorts of programs are unsafe, since it is quite easy to integrate a Ourtopstories.com malware under the guise of part of the license hacking script, or as a component of the self-made algoritm within the Windows optimization tool.

Ourtopstories.com popup virus can also be hidden in the promotion somewhere on the strange site. Such websites are generally filled with intense and blinking ads, and their proprietors typically approve any promos to be published on their page. Thus, clicking on such banners is a risky thing: only the advertisement contractor knows what will happen when you press this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you can additionally get something far more damaging, like ransomware or coin miner; the large share of coin miners circulation is exactly after the malicious advertisements.

People dislike popups

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

Potentially undesirable applications, like Ourtopstories.com popup virus may cause a wide range of different problems on your computer. Distracting is not the single problem – pop-ups can show you the banners, where you are offered to get one more dubious application, or “a perfect anti-malware tool”. Scareware is often spread with the last slogun. Potentially undesirable programs, in turn, may have spyware functions. And it is quite hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a legit one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and fake antiviruses, popup-related banners are also exploited 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 hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not clicking these ads, they may be clicked by whoever who also uses your PC – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the things can become much more serious, and it will be much harder to deal with it without information loss. It is recommended to get rid of the viruses with antivirus applications as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Ourtopstories.com pop-up advertisements?

The guide of Ourtopstories.com adware removal consists of 2 sections. First, we need to deal with the malware, and afterwards correct the results of its activity. The removal procedure is pretty easy, due to the fact that it may be executed even with using Microsoft Defender – anti-malware tool that is available on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. However, as a result of its substantial resources usage, as well as some defects that can be crucial for some kinds of individuals, Defender is frequently turned off by the users, so its utilization is most likely impossible. Additionally, a variety of trojan viruses are able to switch off the embedded antivirus. It is far better to use the separated program that will not have such exposures.

I would certainly advise you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven anti-malware tool that will definitely remove the malware from your system and also create an invulnerable shield with a Proactive protection feature. However, let’s take care of Ourtopstories.com adware first.

Removing Ourtopstories.com 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 Ourtopstories.com 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 browser will connect the right DNS while connecting to the site you need. Make a text file titled “hosts” on your computer’s desktop, after that open it and fill it with the following lines3:

# 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 trouble that makes the things much harder to fix, particularly without the anti-malware program. Most of adware variants that are utilized to show you the Ourtopstories.com pop-up ads are altering the deep browser configurations, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to fix 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, however, large lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 secs, and then it will be back to the typical, up until you try to open settings one more time.

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 Ourtopstories.com Pop-ups?

Name: Ourtopstories.com

Description: Ourtopstories.com - 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 Ourtopstories.com push notifications?” or “why do Ourtopstories.com pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Ourtopstories.com 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 ads on Wikipedia.
  2. GridinSoft Anti-Malware review and also the reasons why I advise 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.

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