Remove Seconomous Pop-up Virus — How to Remove?

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Seconomous pop-up alerts may show up out of the blue, covering the material of the page you checked or opening your browser when you do not wish it to be opened.

Clicking the Seconomous ad can trigger the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this article, you will see the guide of Seconomous popups clearing in several methods, as well as examining your system for other malware existence.

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What are Seconomous pop-ups?

Seconomous popups are a result of adware presence. Adware is a kind of malware that suggests you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click ads, which creates a major volume of income for adware representatives. These advertisements might have explicit composition, or have a link to malicious content/website, since adware maintainers have no reason to check the goodness of the content they are going to show – their single target is cash.

Seconomous push notification

Seconomous push notification.

Pop-up promotions itself is a very good, cheap and very effective marketing solution1. It permits the seller to attach the customers’ interest to their site, as well as the customers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they want to buy. When the customer will receive a pop-up alert that the TV set he desires to buy is available at the online store he/she visited earlier with a 15% price cut, one will certainly use this possibility and get it. Taking into consideration the incredibly small cost for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising and marketing tool is a favourite thing amidst the marketing teams of large internet sellers.

Nonetheless, such a profitable system could not be missed by virus creators. Ability to demonstrate the popup advertisements forcibly to the people of malware attack is a great basis for evil-minded adjustments with the popup promotions. And Seconomous.com ads is just one of hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a short summary for the Seconomous
Site Seconomous.com
Hosting AS14618 Amazon.com, Inc.
United States, Ashburn
Infection Type Adware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address 107.22.28.167
Symptoms Annoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behavior Tag, Buffstream, Toperes
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Seconomous virus?

There are a number of methods of getting contaminated by the adware that cause the Seconomous popups storm. A lion’s part of this malware cases is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Free software may also be downloaded from the official site, and the adware is offered as a legit bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A huge amount of individuals often work with the unreliable programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, different tools that are free, or even hacked programs. Every one of these kinds of programs are dangerous, because it is extremely easy to include a Seconomous 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.

Seconomous popup virus can likewise be hidden in the ad somewhere on the odd website. Such sites are generally packed with colorful and blinking advertisements, and their proprietors usually approve any kind of promotions to be placed on their page. Therefore, clicking on such banners is a risky thing: only the ad contractor knows what will occur when you press this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you may additionally get something a lot more dangerous, 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

Potentially undesirable applications, like Seconomous popup virus can initiate a wide range of troubles on your PC. Distracting is not the single problem – pop-ups can present you the banners, where you are offered to download another dubious application, or “a amazing security tool”. Scareware is usually distributed under the last motto. Potentially unwanted applications, in turn, can have spyware functionality. And it is quite 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 ads are also exploited as a spreading method by various trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such viruses is 100% unwanted, and can cost you hundreds or even thousands of dollars. And even if you are not tapping these ads, they can be clicked by someone who also uses your computer – 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 remove the viruses with anti-malware applications as soon as possible.

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

The guide of Seconomous adware clearing contains 2 parts. Initially, we need to eliminate the malware, and then repair the consequences of its activity. The removal task is pretty easy, because it can be performed even with the use of Microsoft Defender – anti-malware program that is available on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, because of its significant resources consumption, as well as some problems that can be crucial for some kinds of users, Defender is often disabled by the users, so its usage is probably impossible. Moreover, a variety of trojan viruses have the ability to disable the embedded antivirus. It is much better to use the separated program that will not have such weakness.

I’d advise you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven antivirus tool that will surely wipe out the malware from your PC and also make an invulnerable cover with a Proactive protection function. But let’s handle Seconomous adware first.

Removing Seconomous 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 Seconomous 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 web browsers are reset, you need to ensure that your web browser will definitely be connected the accurate DNS while connecting to the website you need. Make a text file titled “hosts” on your 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.

However, there is one issue that makes things a lot more difficult to repair, especially without the anti-malware program. The majority of adware variations that are used to show you the Seconomous pop-up ads are adjusting the deep browser settings, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to fix your browser settings after your computer was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will collapse soon. Sometimes, you will see no crash, however, significant lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 seconds, and after that it will be back to the typical, up 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 Seconomous Pop-ups?

Name: Seconomous

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