Serch03 Ads Removal Guide — How to Fix It?

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Serch03 pop-up alerts may show up out of the blue, covering the content of the website you explored or opening your browser when you do not desire it to be opened.

Clicking on the Serch03 promotion may cause the injection of various malware or unwanted programs. In this article, you will see the tutorial of Serch03 popups removal in several manners, as well as checking your system for extra malware existence.

GridinSoft Anti-Malware Review
It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!
Removing Serch03 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.
Gridinsoft Anti-Malware 6-day trial available.
EULA | Privacy Policy | 10% Off Coupon
Subscribe to our Telegram channel to be the first to know about news and our exclusive materials on information security.

What are Serch03 pop-ups?

Serch03 popups are an outcome of adware action. Adware is a type of malware that presents you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which creates a significant volume of revenue for adware distributors. These ads might contain explicit composition, or have a web link to malicious content/website, since adware maintainers have no reason to inspect the goodness of the content they are going to reveal – their solitary target is money.

Serch03 push notification

Serch03 push notification.

Pop-up marketing itself is a good, low-priced and also very successful marketing tool1. It permits the vendor to link the buyers’ interest to their site, as well as the buyers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they want to purchase. When the consumer will receive a pop-up alert that the TV set he desires to purchase is available at the online store he/she visited earlier with a 15% price cut, one will certainly use this possibility and buy it. Taking into consideration the very low price for the popups and their targeting, such a promotion and marketing instrument is a much-loved thing among the advertising teams of large online stores.

Nevertheless, such a profitable system could not be missed by virus developers. Potential to demonstrate the popup ads by force to the victims of malware invasion is a perfect basis for malicious tricks with the popup promotions. And Serch03.biz ads is one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a short details for the Serch03 site
Site Serch03.biz
Hosting AS39572 DataWeb Global Group B.V.
Netherlands, Amsterdam
Infection Type Adware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address 185.177.94.108
Symptoms Annoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behavior Serch01, Serch02, Demetravertando
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Serch03 virus?

There are a number of methods of becoming infected by the adware that trigger the Serch03 popups storm. A lion’s part of this malware cases is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Freeware can additionally be downloaded from the official site, and the adware is delivered as a legal bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A huge amount of people oftentimes work with the uncertain programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, various utilities that are free, and even hacked programs. All of these sorts of applications are unsafe, since it is quite simple to build in a Serch03 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.

Serch03 popup virus may likewise be concealed in the ad somewhere on the odd website. Such sites are usually full of colorful and blinking advertisements, and their proprietors generally accept any promotions to be published on their page. Therefore, clicking on such banners is a shot in the dark: only the ad contractor realizes what will happen when you click this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you can also get something far more unsafe, like ransomware or coin miner; the large share of coin miners circulation 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 Serch03 popup virus can cause a variety of troubles on your PC. Distracting is not the only problem – pop-ups can display you the banners, where you are offered to download another strange application, or “a effective security tool”. Scareware is often spread under the last slogun. Potentially undesirable applications, in turn, can have spyware functions. And it is pretty 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 chosen as a distribution way by different trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such malware is 100% unpleasant, and can cost you hundreds or even thousands of dollars. And even if you are not clicking these banners, they may be clicked by whoever who also makes use of your computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the things can become much more serious, and it will be much harder to deal with it without data and money loss. It is recommended to get rid of the viruses with anti-malware applications as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Serch03 pop-up advertisements?

The tutorial of Serch03 adware removal contains 2 parts. Initially, we need to get rid of the malware, and then fix the consequences of its activity. The removal task is quite easy, since it may be done even with making use of Microsoft Defender – security tool that is present on all computers with Windows 8/10. Nonetheless, due to its huge resources consumption, along with some defects that may be pivotal for some kinds of individuals, Defender is frequently turned off by the users, so its use is probably impossible. Furthermore, different trojan viruses can turn off the embedded antivirus. It is far better to use the separated program that will not have such vulnerabilities.

I’d suggest you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven security tool that will certainly erase the malware from your personal computer and create an impenetrable shield with a Proactive protection function. But let’s manage Serch03 adware initially.

Removing Serch03 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 Serch03 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 make sure that your web browser will connect the right DNS while connecting to the website you want. Create a text file titled “hosts” on your computer’s desktop, then open it and fill it with the following content3:

# 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 a lot harder to repair, especially without the anti-malware program. Most of adware variations that are utilized to show you the Serch03 pop-up promotions are modifying the deep browser setups, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to change your browser settings after your computer was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly collapse soon. In certain cases, you will see no crash, but huge lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 secs, and after that it will be back to the normal, up until you try 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 Serch03 Pop-ups?

Name: Serch03

Description: Serch03 - 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 Serch03.biz push notifications?” or “why do Serch03.biz pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Serch03 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

Sending
User Review
3.75 (4 votes)
Comments Rating 0 (0 reviews)

References

  1. More about pop-up advertisements on Wikipedia.
  2. GridinSoft Anti-Malware overview and also the reasons why I recommend 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.

Leave a Reply

Sending