Remove Pushycaptcha.live Virus — How to Fix Guide

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Pushycaptcha.live pop-up notifications can appear unexpectedly, covering the content of the website you explored or opening your web browser when you don’t wish it to be opened.

Clicking on the Pushycaptcha.live advertisement can lead to the injection of different malware or unwanted programs. In this guide, you will see the tutorial of Pushycaptcha.live popups clearing in several manners, and also examining your system for extra malware existence.

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What are Pushycaptcha.live pop-ups?

Pushycaptcha.live popups are an effect of adware activity. Adware is a kind of malware that suggests you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which generates a massive amount of profit for adware distributors. These ads may include explicit material, or have a web link to malicious content/website, due to the fact that adware maintainers have no purpose to inspect the goodness of the content they are going to show – their single target is money.

Pushycaptcha.live push notification

Pushycaptcha.live push notification.

Pop-up promotions itself is a very good, cheap and also extremely effective marketing solution1. It allows the vendor to attach the buyers’ attention to their site, and the buyers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they intend to purchase. When the customer will receive a pop-up notification that the TV set he desires to buy is available at the online shop he/she checked out earlier with a 15% price cut, one will certainly use this possibility and get it. Considering the exceptionally low price for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising and marketing instrument is a favourite thing amongst the advertising teams of large internet sellers.

Nonetheless, such a rewarding scheme could not be missed by virus developers. Potential to show the popup ads by force to the targets of malware attack is an excellent basis for malicious manipulations with the popup ads. And Pushycaptcha.live ads is among hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a summary for the Pushycaptcha.live
Site Pushycaptcha.live
Hosting AS35277 LLHOST INC. SRL
Netherlands, Haarlem
Infection Type Adware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address 45.155.120.178
Symptoms Annoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behavior News, Nicklusia, Resat
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Pushycaptcha.live virus?

There are a lot of methods of becoming contaminated by the adware that lead to the Pushycaptcha.live popups tornado. A lion’s part of this virus instances is after the free software or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Freeware may additionally be downloaded from the official web page, and the adware is presented as a legal bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A lot of individuals oftentimes utilize the unreliable programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, different tools that are free, and even hacked programs. All of these sorts of programs are unsafe, since it is very easy to build in a Pushycaptcha.live 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.

Pushycaptcha.live popup virus may also be concealed in the promotion somewhere on the unusual website. Such websites are generally packed with intense and blinking advertisements, and their proprietors often approve any kind of promos to be placed on their web page. Thus, clicking on such banners is a shot in the dark: only the advertisement provider knows what will occur when you click this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you may also receive something much 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 programs, like Pushycaptcha.live pop-up virus may initiate a variety of troubles on your PC. Distracting is not the only problem – pop-ups can present you the advertisements, where you are offered to get one more unknown application, or “a effective anti-malware tool”. Scareware is often spread with the last slogun. Potentially undesirable applications, in turn, can have spyware functionality. And it is very 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 promotions are also chosen as a distribution method by different trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of actions of such malware is 100% unpleasant, and can cost you several hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not clicking these banners, they may 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 deal with it without data loss. It is recommended to wipe out the viruses with anti-malware programs as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Pushycaptcha.live pop-up advertisements?

The tutorial of Pushycaptcha.live adware clearing includes 2 sections. First, we need to remove the malware, and after that take care of the effects of its action. The removal procedure is pretty simple, since it can be performed even with making use of Microsoft Defender – security program that is present on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nonetheless, due to its large resources consumption, as well as some failures that may be crucial for some kinds of individuals, Defender is oftentimes turned off by the users, so its usage is most likely impossible. What’s more, a wide range of trojan viruses are capable to switch off the embedded antivirus. It is better to make use of the separated program that will not have such exposures.

I’d recommend you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven antivirus device that will surely exterminate the viruses from your computer and also create an impenetrable cover with a Proactive protection function. But let’s deal with Pushycaptcha.live adware initially.

Removing Pushycaptcha.live 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 Pushycaptcha.live 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 make sure that your browser will definitely be connected the proper DNS while connecting to the site you want. Create a text file named “hosts” on your pc’s desktop, after that 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.

However, there is one problem that makes things much more difficult to restore, specifically without the anti-malware program. Most of adware variations that are used to show you the Pushycaptcha.live pop-up advertisements are changing the deep browser setups, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to fix your browser settings after your system was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly collapse soon. Sometimes, you will see no crash, but huge 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 attempt 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 Pushycaptcha.live Pop-ups?

Name: Pushycaptcha.live

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