Remove Rips.icu Pop-up Virus — How to Remove?

Written by Wilbur Woodham

Undesirable Rips.icu pop-up alerts may show up out of the blue, covering the subject of the page you explored or opening your browser when you do not wish it to be opened. Clicking the Rips.icu pop-up ad may result in the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this article, you will see the guideline of Rips.icu popups clearing in a couple of ways, and also inspecting your personal computer for other viruses presence.

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What are Rips.icu pop-ups?

Rips.icu popups are an effect of adware action. Adware is a type of malware that shows you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click promotions, which produces a large volume of revenue for adware distributors. These ads may consist of sometimes shocking information, or have a web link to malevolent content/website, considering that adware maintainers have no reason to examine the goodness of the material they are going to show – their single target is cash.

Rips.icu push notification

Rips.icu push notification.

Pop-up marketing itself is a very good, low-priced and also extremely productive advertising instrument1 It permits the vendor to attach the buyers’ interest to their site, and the customers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they wish to buy. When the customer will receive a pop-up notification that the TV set he wishes to buy is provided at the online store he/she visited earlier with a 15% discount, one will undoubtedly use this possibility and purchase it. Considering the very small cost for the popups and their targeting, such a promotion and marketing method is a much-loved thing amongst the marketing teams of huge internet retail stores.

However, such a profitable scheme could not be missed by malware developers. Potential to demonstrate the popup advertisements forcibly to the victims of malware attack is an excellent basis for malevolent manipulations with the popup promotions. And Rips.icu advertisements is just one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a short details for the Rips.icu site
Site Rips.icu
Hosting AS20454 SECURED SERVERS LLC
United States, Phoenix
Infection Type Adware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address 131.153.42.211
Symptoms Annoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behavior Vercounsel.top, Caricerecorated.info, Locationtutor.xyz
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Rips.icu virus?

There are a number of methods of becoming infected by the adware that result in the Rips.icu popups storm. A lion’s part of this computer virus cases is after the free software or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Freeware may also be downloaded from the main website, and the adware is presented as a legit bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A lot of users oftentimes utilize the uncertain programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, a wide range of apps that are free of cost, and even hacked programs. All of these sorts of software are risky, due to the fact that it is quite simple to build in a Rips.icu malware under the guise of part of the license hacking script, or as a component of the self-made algoritm inside of the Windows optimization tool.

Rips.icu popup virus can also be hidden in the ad somewhere on the odd website. Such sites are typically loaded with intense and blinking advertisements, and their proprietors often accept any type of promotions to be published on their page. For this reason, clicking such banners is a shot in the dark: only the ad contractor realizes what will happen when you press this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you can likewise get something a lot more risky, like ransomware or coin miner; the substantial 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

How can I get rid of Rips.icu pop-up advertisements?

The guide of Rips.icu adware elimination consists of 2 sections. Initially, we need to deal with the malware, and after that take care of the effects of its action. The elimination process is quite simple, because it can be performed even with the use of Microsoft Defender – anti-virus software that is available on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. However, due to its substantial resources utilization, as well as some bugs that may be serious for some types of individuals, Defender is oftentimes turned off by the users, so its utilization is probably impossible. In addition, a variety of trojan viruses have the ability to disable the embedded antivirus. It is far better to use the separated program that will not have such exposures.

I’d recommend you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven antivirus device that will undoubtedly remove the viruses from your computer and also create an impenetrable shield with a Proactive protection feature. But let’s manage Rips.icu adware initially.

Removing Rips.icu 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 Rips.icu 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 web browser will be connected the proper DNS while connecting to the website you need. Create a text file named “hosts” on your desktop, then 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 much harder to restore, specifically without the anti-malware software. A lot of adware variations that are utilized to show you the Rips.icu pop-up advertisements are modifying the deep browser configurations, 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 certainly collapse soon. In some cases, you will see no crash, however, huge lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 seconds, and then it will be back to the typical, until 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 Rips.icu Pop-ups?

Name: Rips.icu

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