Remove Puscomosca Virus — How to Fix Guide

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Puscomosca pop-up notifications can show up out of the blue, covering the subject of the website you visited or opening your browser when you do not need it to be opened.

Clicking the Puscomosca ad can lead to the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this article, you will see the guide of Puscomosca popups clearing in a couple of manners, and also examining your computer for additional malware existence.

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What are Puscomosca pop-ups?

Puscomosca popups are a result of adware presence. Adware is a kind of malware that suggests you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click ads, which produces a substantial volume of revenue for adware suppliers. These advertisements might consist of explicit material, or have a web link to malicious content/website, considering that adware maintainers have no reason to check the goodness of the content they are going to reveal – their single target is money.

Puscomosca push notification

Puscomosca push notification.

Pop-up advertising itself is a very good, low-priced and really efficient advertising instrument1. It enables the vendor to link the customers’ attention to their website, and the buyers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they want to purchase. When the person will receive a pop-up notification that the TV set he desires to buy is offered at the online shop he/she saw earlier with a 15% discount, one will undoubtedly use this chance and buy it. Taking into consideration the exceptionally low cost for the popups and their targeting, such a promotion and marketing instrument is a favourite thing amidst the marketing teams of large online stores.

Nonetheless, such a successful strategy could not be missed by malware developers. Option to demonstrate the popup advertisements by force to the targets of malware invasion is a great basis for malevolent tricks with the popup promotions. And Puscomosca.com promotions is just one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a short summary for the Puscomosca site
SitePuscomosca.com
HostingAS16509 Amazon.com, Inc.
Germany, Mörfelden-Walldorf
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address108.138.7.53
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorPhenotypebest, Stayundercontrol, Headcaptcha
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Puscomosca virus?

There are a number of ways of becoming contaminated by the adware that trigger the Puscomosca popups storm. A lion’s part of this malware instances is after the free software or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Free software can additionally be downloaded from the main website, and the adware is supplied as a legal bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A huge amount of people regularly use the dubious programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, various apps that are free, and even hacked programs. All of these types of software are unsafe, since it is very simple to build in a Puscomosca malware under the cover of part of the license hacking script, or as a component of the self-made algoritm inside of the Windows optimization tool.

Puscomosca popup virus may also be concealed in the ad somewhere on the unusual website. Such sites are usually packed with bright and blinking advertisements, and their owners typically accept any type of promotions to be published on their page. Thus, clicking such banners is a shot in the dark: only the advertisement provider knows what will occur when you click this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you can additionally get something far more damaging, like ransomware or coin miner; the big 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 Puscomosca popup virus may provoke a lot of different problems on your PC. Distracting is not the single problem – pop-ups may show you the ads, where you are offered to get another unknown program, or “a perfect anti-malware tool”. Scareware is often distributed with the last slogun. Potentially undesirable programs, in turn, can have spyware functions. And it is very hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a good one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and pseudo antiviruses, popup-related banners are also chosen as a spreading method by various trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such viruses is 100% unpleasant, and can cost you hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not clicking these banners, they can be clicked by whoever who also makes use of your computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the things may become much more serious, and it will be much harder to solve it without data and money loss. It is recommended to remove the viruses with anti-malware programs as soon as possible.

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

The guide of Puscomosca adware removal contains 2 parts. First, we need to get rid of the malware, and then correct the effects of its action. The removal procedure is really simple, since it can be executed even with the use of Microsoft Defender – anti-virus software that is available on all computers with Windows 8/10. However, due to its huge resources utilization, along with some errors that can be critical for some types of users, Defender is often turned off by the users, so its usage is probably impossible. Furthermore, different trojan viruses are capable to shut off the embedded antivirus. It is far better to make use of 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 surely wipe out the viruses from your system and also make an invulnerable shield with a Proactive protection feature. But let’s handle Puscomosca adware first.

Removing Puscomosca 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 Puscomosca 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 browsers are reset, you need to ensure that your web browser will definitely be connected the correct DNS while connecting to the site you want. Make a text file named “hosts” on your computer’s desktop, then open it and fill it with the following content3:

# 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 issue that makes things much more difficult to restore, especially without the anti-malware software. Most of adware variants that are used to show you the Puscomosca pop-up promotions are adjusting the deep browser setups, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to fix your browser settings after your PC was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will collapse quickly. 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 typical, till you try 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.

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 Puscomosca Pop-ups?

Name: Puscomosca

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