Read-the-article Ads Removal Guide — How to Fix It?

Read-the-article pop-up notifications may show up out of the blue, covering the content of the website you checked or opening your browser when you do not want it to be opened.

Clicking the Read-the-article promotion can result in the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the manual of Read-the-article popups clearing in several manners, and also inspecting your personal computer for other viruses presence.

It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!

Removing Read-the-article manually may take hours and may damage your PC in the process. I recommend you to download GridinSoft Anti-Malware for threats removal. Allows to complete scan and cure your PC during the trial period.

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What are Read-the-article pop-ups?

Read-the-article popups are a consequence of adware presence. Adware is a type of malware that demonstrates to you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click ads, which produces a substantial amount of profit for adware suppliers. These promotions may consist of explicit information, or have a web link to malevolent content/website, due to the fact that adware maintainers have no reason to inspect the goodness of the content they are going to reveal – their solitary target is money.

Read-the-article push notification.

Pop-up promotions itself is a good, low-cost and also very successful marketing tool¹. It permits the seller to link the buyers’ interest to their website, as well as the customers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they want to buy. When the person will get a pop-up alert that the TV set he wishes to buy is provided at the online store he/she saw earlier with a 15% price cut, one will surely use this chance and purchase it. Taking into consideration the exceptionally low price for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising tool is a much-loved thing amidst the advertising teams of huge internet retailers.

Nonetheless, such a successful strategy could not be missed by malware developers. Option to show the popup ads by force to the targets of malware attack is an excellent basis for malevolent manipulations with the popup promotions. And Read-the-article.com promotions is just one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a details for the Read-the-article site

How have I got the Read-the-article virus?

There are a number of methods of getting contaminated by the adware that trigger the Read-the-article popups storm. A lion’s part of this malware cases is after the free software or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Freeware can additionally be downloaded from the main web page, and the adware is delivered as a legal bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A number of individuals frequently use the unreliable programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, a wide range of utilities that are free of cost, and even hacked programs. All of these kinds of programs are dangerous, because it is very simple to build in a Read-the-article 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.

Read-the-article popup malware can likewise be hidden in the promotion somewhere on the strange site. Such sites are in most cases full of intense and blinking ads, and their proprietors typically accept any promotions to be posted on their page. For this reason, clicking such banners is a risky thing: only the advertisement contractor knows what will happen when you press this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you may also get something much more damaging, like ransomware or coin miner; the big share of coin miners distribution is exactly after the malicious advertisements.

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

Potentially undesirable applications, like Read-the-article popup virus can initiate a lot of troubles on your PC. Distracting is not the single effect – pop-up notifications can present you the ads, where you are offered to get another unknown program, or “a amazing anti-malware tool”. Scareware is usually distributed under the last motto. Potentially undesirable applications, in turn, can have spyware functionality. And it is pretty hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a good one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and pseudo antiviruses, popup-related promotions are also used as a distribution way by different trojan viruses, for instance – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such malware is 100% unwanted, and can cost you several hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not interacting with these promotions, they may be clicked by whoever who also makes use of your personal computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the things can become much more serious, and it will be much harder to solve it without data and money loss. It is recommended to wipe out the viruses with antivirus applications as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Read-the-article pop-up advertisements?

The tutorial of Read-the-article adware elimination includes 2 parts. First, we need to remove the malware, and then correct the consequences of its activity. The elimination task is pretty easy, because it may be performed even with making use of Microsoft Defender – anti-malware tool that is present on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. However, as a result of its large resources utilization, as well as some errors that may be pivotal for some groups of individuals, Defender is frequently turned off by the users, so its usage is most likely impossible. Additionally, a variety of trojan viruses are capable to disable the embedded antivirus. It is far better to make use of the separated program that will not have such weakness.

I would certainly suggest you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware² – a well-proven security device that will undoubtedly eliminate the malware from your PC and also create an invulnerable cover with a Proactive protection function. But let’s handle Read-the-article adware initially.

Removing Read-the-article 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.

• 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.

• When the scan is over, you may choose the action for each detected virus. For all files of Read-the-article malware the default option is “Delete”. Press “Apply” to finish the malware removal.

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. 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. In the next screen, find the “Refresh Firefox” option :

After choosing this option, you will see the next message :

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 web browser will definitely connect the accurate DNS while connecting to the web page you want. Create a text file titled “hosts” on your desktop, then open it and fill it with the following lines³:

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 problem that makes the things a lot more difficult to fix, particularly without the anti-malware program. Most of adware variants that are used to show you the Read-the-article pop-up ads are changing the deep browser setups, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to fix your browser settings after your machine was penetrated 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 normal, until 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.

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.

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.

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.