Sensualsmiles Ads Removal Guide — How to Fix It?

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Sensualsmiles pop-up notifications can show up unexpectedly, covering the material of the site you checked or opening your web browser when you do not need it to be opened.

Clicking the Sensualsmiles promotion may cause the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this article, you will see the manual of Sensualsmiles popups clearing in various manners, and also examining your system for other malware presence.

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What are Sensualsmiles pop-ups?

Sensualsmiles popups are an effect of adware activity. Adware is a kind of malware that shows you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click promotions, which generates a large volume of income for adware distributors. These ads may contain explicit information, or have a web link to malicious content/website, considering that adware maintainers have no purpose to examine the goodness of the content they are going to show – their single target is money.

Sensualsmiles push notification

Sensualsmiles push notification.

Pop-up advertising itself is a very good, cheap and really effective advertising tool1. It makes it possible for the vendor to link the buyers’ interest to their website, as well as the customers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they want to purchase. When the customer will get a pop-up notification that the TV set he wishes to buy is available at the online shop he/she visited previously with a 15% discount, one will undoubtedly use this chance and purchase it. Taking into consideration the incredibly low price for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising instrument is a much-loved thing among the advertising teams of huge online retail stores.

Nevertheless, such a profitable strategy could not be missed by virus developers. Potential to demonstrate the popup ads by force to the victims of malware invasion is a great basis for malicious manipulations with the popup ads. And Sensualsmiles.com ads is just one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a summary for the Sensualsmiles site
SiteSensualsmiles.com
HostingAS7979 Servers.com, Inc.
United States, Alexandria
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address173.233.137.36
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorSimarmduke, Yyptia, Pashkahome
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Sensualsmiles virus?

There are a plenty of ways of becoming infected by the adware that cause the Sensualsmiles popups tornado. A lion’s part of this virus instances is after the free software or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Free software may also be downloaded from the main web page, and the adware is offered as a legit bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A huge amount of users oftentimes work with the unreliable programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, a wide range of apps that are free of cost, and even hacked programs. All of these types of applications are risky, since it is very simple to build in a Sensualsmiles 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.

Sensualsmiles popup virus can also be hidden in the promotion somewhere on the unusual site. Such web pages are usually packed with intense and blinking advertisements, and their owners often accept any type of promotions to be placed on their web page. For this reason, clicking on such banners is a risky thing: only the ad provider knows what will happen when you click this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you may additionally get something a lot more dangerous, like ransomware or coin miner; the large share of coin miners circulation is exactly after the malicious advertisements.

People dislike popups

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

Potentially undesirable applications, like Sensualsmiles popup virus may initiate a wide range of different troubles on your computer. Distracting is not the only effect – pop-ups can display you the promotions, where you are offered to download another dubious program, or “a amazing anti-malware tool”. Scareware is often spread under the last slogun. Potentially unwanted applications, in turn, may have spyware functions. And it is very hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a legit one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and fake antiviruses, popup-related banners are also exploited as a spreading way by various trojan viruses, for instance – coin miners. The consequences of actions of such malware is 100% unpleasant, and can cost you hundreds or even thousands of dollars. And even if you are not clicking these promotions, they may be clicked by whoever who also uses 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 loss. It is recommended to eliminate the viruses with antivirus programs as soon as possible.

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

The tutorial of Sensualsmiles adware elimination consists of 2 sections. First, we need to get rid of the malware, and after that deal with the results of its activity. The removal process is very simple, due to the fact that it may be performed even with making use of Microsoft Defender – anti-malware software that is available on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. However, as a result of its large resources usage, along with some defects that can be critical for some categories of individuals, Defender is frequently disabled by the users, so its use is probably impossible. Furthermore, a variety of trojan viruses have the ability to shut off the embedded antivirus. It is better to make use of the separated program that will not have such weakness.

I’d recommend you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven antivirus device that will undoubtedly eliminate the viruses from your PC and make an invulnerable shield with a Proactive protection function. However, let’s handle Sensualsmiles adware initially.

Removing Sensualsmiles 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 Sensualsmiles 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 connect the right 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.

However, there is one problem that makes things much more difficult to restore, particularly without the anti-malware software. The majority of adware variants that are used to show you the Sensualsmiles pop-up advertisements are adjusting the deep browser configurations, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to change your browser settings after your machine was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly collapse quickly. In certain cases, you will see no crash, however, significant lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 seconds, and then it will be back to the typical, till you attempt to open settings once again.

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 Sensualsmiles Pop-ups?

Name: Sensualsmiles

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