Remove Searchoper Virus — How to Fix Guide

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Searchoper pop-up alerts can show up out of the blue, covering the post of the page you went to or opening your browser when you don’t wish it to be opened.

Clicking on the Searchoper promotion can cause the injection of different malware or unwanted programs. In this article, you will see the guide of Searchoper popups clearing in several methods, as well as examining your personal computer for extra malware presence.

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What are Searchoper pop-ups?

Searchoper popups are a result of adware presence. Adware is a type of malware that shows you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click promotions, which creates a substantial volume of income for adware representatives. These advertisements might have sometimes shocking information, or have a web link to harmful content/website, because adware maintainers have no reason to inspect the goodness of the web content they are going to show – their solitary target is cash.

Searchoper push notification

Searchoper push notification.

Pop-up promotions itself is a good, affordable and also really effective marketing instrument1. It makes it possible for the seller to attach the buyers’ interest to their website, as well as the customers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they intend to purchase. When the person will receive a pop-up notification that the TV set he likes to purchase is provided at the online shop he/she visited earlier with a 15% price cut, one will certainly use this chance and buy it. Taking into consideration the exceptionally low price for the popups and their targeting, such a promotion and marketing method is a favorite thing amidst the marketing teams of big online retailers.

However, such a successful strategy could not be missed by virus developers. Ability to demonstrate the popup advertisements by force to the targets of malware invasion is a great basis for malevolent manipulations with the popup promotions. And Searchoper.com promotions is among hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a short summary for the Searchoper
SiteSearchoper.com
HostingAS16509 Amazon.com, Inc.
Germany, Mörfelden-Walldorf
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address18.66.122.30
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorGetraz, Salepromob2, Priophooncogla
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Searchoper virus?

There are a number of ways of getting infected by the adware that result in the Searchoper popups tornado. A lion’s part of this malware incidents 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 offered as a legal bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A number of individuals oftentimes use the dubious programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, various utilities that are free of cost, or even hacked programs. Every one of these kinds of programs are unsafe, since it is quite easy to integrate a Searchoper malware under the guise of part of the license hacking script, or as a part of the self-made algoritm within the Windows optimization tool.

Searchoper popup malware may also be concealed in the ad somewhere on the odd website. Such sites are usually loaded with colorful and blinking ads, and their owners usually permit any type of promotions to be published on their page. Thus, clicking such banners is a risky thing: only the advertisement provider realizes what will occur when you press this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you may additionally receive something much more dangerous, like ransomware or coin miner; the substantial share of coin miners distribution is exactly after the malicious promotions.

People dislike popups

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

Potentially unwanted programs, like Searchoper popup virus can initiate a wide range of different troubles on your personal computer. Distracting is not the single effect – pop-ups may present you the banners, where you are offered to get another dubious application, or “a effective anti-malware tool”. Scareware is usually spread with the last slogun. Potentially unwanted programs, in turn, can have spyware functionality. And it is quite hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a good one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and fake antiviruses, popup-related promotions are also exploited as a distribution way by different trojan viruses, for example – 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 tapping these banners, they can be clicked by whoever who also makes use of your PC – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the situation may become much more serious, and it will be much harder to solve it without data loss. It is recommended to wipe out the viruses with anti-malware applications as soon as possible.

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

The guide of Searchoper adware elimination includes 2 sections. First, we need to remove the malware, and afterwards fix the consequences of its activity. The removal procedure is really easy, since it may be performed even with making use of Microsoft Defender – anti-malware tool that is present on all computers with Windows 8/10. However, as a result of its significant resources utilization, as well as some bugs that can be critical for some types of users, Defender is often turned off by the users, so its usage is probably impossible. Additionally, various trojan viruses have the ability to switch off the embedded antivirus. It is better to make use of the separated program that will not have such exposures.

I would certainly suggest you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven security tool that will definitely wipe out the malware from your personal computer and also make an invulnerable cover with a Proactive protection feature. However, let’s take care of Searchoper adware first.

Removing Searchoper 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 Searchoper 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 correct DNS while connecting to the site you want. Make a text file titled “hosts” on your pc’s desktop, then 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.

Nevertheless, there is one issue that makes things much more difficult to repair, particularly without the anti-malware software. Most of adware variants that are used to show you the Searchoper pop-up promotions are modifying the deep browser settings, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to change your browser settings after your machine was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly collapse quickly. In some cases, you will see no crash, but huge lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 secs, and after that 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.

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 Searchoper Pop-ups?

Name: Searchoper

Description: Searchoper - 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 Searchoper.com push notifications?” or “why do Searchoper.com pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Searchoper 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 also the reasons why I recommend it for malware removal.
  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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