Remove Rankcaptcha.top Pop-up Virus — How to Remove?

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Rankcaptcha.top pop-up notifications may appear unexpectedly, covering the content of the site you explored or opening your browser when you do not wish it to be opened.

Clicking the Rankcaptcha.top ad can trigger the injection of different malware or unwanted programs. In this article, you will see the tutorial of Rankcaptcha.top popups removal in multiple ways, as well as checking your PC for extra viruses presence.

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What are Rankcaptcha.top pop-ups?

Rankcaptcha.top popups are an effect of adware presence. Adware is a kind of malware that demonstrates to you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click ads, which generates a massive amount of profit for adware distributors. These ads may contain explicit information, or have a link to malevolent content/website, due to the fact that adware maintainers have no purpose to examine the goodness of the material they are going to show – their solitary target is cash.

Rankcaptcha.top push notification

Rankcaptcha.top push notification.

Pop-up marketing itself is an excellent, cheap and really successful marketing solution1. It enables the seller to attach the buyers’ attention to their website, and the customers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they wish to purchase. When the person will get a pop-up alert that the TV set he wishes to buy is offered at the online store he/she saw earlier with a 15% price cut, one will definitely use this chance and buy it. Taking into consideration the incredibly small cost for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising instrument is a much-loved thing among the advertising departments of big internet sellers.

Nonetheless, such a profitable plan could not be missed by virus creators. Option to demonstrate the popup advertisements by force to the victims of malware invasion is a great basis for malicious adjustments with the popup advertisements. And Rankcaptcha.top promotions is one of hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a info for the Rankcaptcha.top site
SiteRankcaptcha.top
HostingAS35277 LLHOST INC. SRL
Netherlands, Haarlem
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address45.155.120.165
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorNews, Soded, Sosed
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Rankcaptcha.top virus?

There are a plenty of methods of becoming contaminated by the adware that cause the Rankcaptcha.top 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. Freeware can also be downloaded from the main website, and the adware is provided as a legitimate bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A huge amount of people regularly make use of the dubious programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, various tools that are free of cost, or even hacked programs. Every one of these types of programs are risky, because it is very simple to build in a Rankcaptcha.top malware under the cover of part of the license hacking script, or as a part of the self-made algoritm inside of the Windows optimization tool.

Rankcaptcha.top popup virus may additionally be hidden in the promotion somewhere on the strange web page. Such websites are in most cases packed with intense and blinking ads, and their proprietors usually accept any promotions to be placed on their web page. Therefore, clicking on such banners is a shot in the dark: only the ad contractor realizes what will happen when you press this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you may additionally get something much more threatening, like ransomware or coin miner; the large share of coin miners circulation is exactly after the malicious ads.

People dislike popups

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

Potentially unwanted applications, like Rankcaptcha.top pop-up virus can provoke a variety of troubles on your PC. Distracting is not the single problem – pop-ups may show you the ads, where you are offered to download one more dubious application, or “a perfect security tool”. Scareware is usually spread with the last motto. Potentially unwanted programs, in turn, may 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 dubious antiviruses, popup-related advertisements are also used as a distribution method by different trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such viruses is 100% unpleasant, and can cost you several hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not tapping these promotions, they can be clicked by whoever 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 information loss. It is recommended to eliminate the viruses with antivirus programs as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Rankcaptcha.top pop-up advertisements?

The manual of Rankcaptcha.top adware elimination contains 2 parts. Initially, we need to deal with the malware, and afterwards correct the results of its activity. The removal task is really simple, because it may be done even with using Microsoft Defender – security program that is available on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. However, due to its large resources consumption, along with some bugs that can be serious for some kinds of users, Defender is oftentimes turned off by the users, so its usage is most likely impossible. Moreover, different trojan viruses are able to disable the embedded antivirus. It is better to make use of the separated program that will not have such exposures.

I would certainly advise you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven anti-malware tool that will surely eliminate the viruses from your system and create an invulnerable cover with a Proactive protection function. But let’s take care of Rankcaptcha.top adware first.

Removing Rankcaptcha.top 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 Rankcaptcha.top 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 browser will definitely be connected the accurate DNS while connecting to the web page you want. Create a text file named “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 problem that makes the things a lot harder to fix, especially without the anti-malware program. The majority of adware variants that are utilized to show you the Rankcaptcha.top pop-up promotions are changing the deep browser configurations, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to fix your browser settings after your PC was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly collapse soon. In some cases, you will see no crash, however, significant lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 seconds, and afterwards it will be back to the typical, 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.

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 Rankcaptcha.top Pop-ups?

Name: Rankcaptcha.top

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