Primerewardz Ads Removal Guide — How to Fix It?

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Primerewardz pop-up notifications may show up unexpectedly, covering the material of the website you explored or opening your web browser when you don’t need it to be opened.

Clicking on the Primerewardz advertisement can lead to the injection of different malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the guide of Primerewardz popups clearing in several methods, as well as examining your personal computer for extra viruses presence.

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What are Primerewardz pop-ups?

Primerewardz popups are an effect of adware activity. Adware is a type of malware that shows you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which creates a significant amount of income for adware suppliers. These ads may include sometimes shocking material, or have a link to malicious content/website, since adware maintainers have no reason to check the goodness of the content they are going to show – their single target is money.

Primerewardz push notification

Primerewardz push notification.

Pop-up promotions itself is a very good, affordable and really effective advertising tool1. It makes it possible for the seller to attach the customers’ interest to their website, and the buyers 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 wishes to purchase is offered at the online shop he/she saw earlier with a 15% price cut, one will surely use this opportunity and get it. Taking into consideration the exceptionally low cost for the popups and their targeting, such a promotion and marketing tool is a favorite thing amongst the advertising teams of huge internet sellers.

Nevertheless, such a successful plan could not be missed by virus creators. Potential to show the popup advertisements forcibly to the people of malware attack is a perfect basis for evil-minded manipulations with the popup promotions. And Primerewardz.com promotions is just one of hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a short summary for the Primerewardz
Site Primerewardz.com
Hosting AS14618 Amazon.com, Inc.
United States, Ashburn
Infection Type Adware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address 34.192.109.170
Symptoms Annoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behavior Usefulcreatebid, Robotchecked, Gossip
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Primerewardz virus?

There are a number of ways of getting contaminated by the adware that cause the Primerewardz popups tornado. A lion’s part of this computer virus instances is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Freeware can additionally be downloaded from the main web page, and the adware is supplied as a legitimate bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A number of people frequently work with the unreliable programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, various tools that are free of cost, or even hacked programs. All of these kinds of software are risky, because it is quite easy to include a Primerewardz 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.

Primerewardz popup virus may also be concealed in the advertisement somewhere on the odd website. Such web pages are generally packed with bright and blinking advertisements, and their owners generally accept any kind of promotions to be published on their web page. Thus, clicking such banners is a risky thing: only the advertisement provider knows what will happen when you press this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you may also receive something a lot more unsafe, like ransomware or coin miner; the big share of coin miners distribution is exactly after the malicious ads.

People dislike popups

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

Potentially undesirable applications, like Primerewardz popup virus may provoke a wide range of troubles on your personal computer. Distracting is not the only problem – pop-ups can present you the promotions, where you are offered to download another strange application, or “a amazing security tool”. Scareware is often spread under the last slogun. Potentially undesirable applications, in turn, can have spyware functions. And it is very hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a legit one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and pseudo antiviruses, popup-related promotions are also chosen as a spreading method by various trojan viruses, for instance – coin miners. The consequences of actions of such viruses is 100% unpleasant, and can cost you hundreds or even thousands of dollars. And even if you are not tapping these promotions, they may be clicked by someone 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 data and money loss. It is recommended to eliminate the viruses with antivirus applications as soon as possible.

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

The manual of Primerewardz adware elimination consists of 2 parts. First, we need to exterminate the malware, and after that repair the effects of its action. The removal procedure is pretty easy, since it can be performed even with using Microsoft Defender – security tool that is present on all computers with Windows 8/10. However, as a result of its significant resources utilization, as well as some defects that can be crucial for some groups of users, Defender is often turned off by the users, so its utilization is most likely impossible. Moreover, different trojan viruses can turn off the embedded antivirus. It is far better to make use of the separated program that will not have such weakness.

I’d advise you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven anti-malware tool that will undoubtedly remove the viruses from your personal computer and make an invulnerable cover with a Proactive protection function. But let’s handle Primerewardz adware first.

Removing Primerewardz 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 Primerewardz 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 be connected the right DNS while connecting to the web page you need. Make a text file named “hosts” on your pc’s desktop, after that 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 trouble that makes the things a lot more difficult to repair, especially without the anti-malware software. Most of adware versions that are utilized to show you the Primerewardz pop-up promotions are modifying the deep browser setups, 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 crash soon. In certain 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 typical, up until you attempt 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 Primerewardz Pop-ups?

Name: Primerewardz

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

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