Serterq.top Ads Removal Guide — How to Fix It?

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Serterq.top pop-up alerts may show up unexpectedly, covering the content of the page you went to or opening your web browser when you don’t wish it to be opened.

Clicking the Serterq.top promotion may result in the injection of different malware or unwanted programs. In this article, you will see the guide of Serterq.top popups clearing in a couple of ways, and also examining your PC for additional malware presence.

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What are Serterq.top pop-ups?

Serterq.top popups are an effect of adware presence. Adware is a type of malware that demonstrates to you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which generates a significant amount of earnings for adware suppliers. These ads might consist of sometimes shocking material, or have a web link to malevolent content/website, considering that adware maintainers have no reason to check the goodness of the material they are going to reveal – their single target is cash.

Serterq.top push notification

Serterq.top push notification.

Pop-up promotions itself is an excellent, low-cost and also really effective marketing solution1. It enables the seller to attach the buyers’ attention to their website, as well as the buyers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they intend to buy. When the customer will receive a pop-up notification that the TV set he likes to purchase is available at the online store he/she checked out earlier with a 15% discount, one will definitely use this possibility and get it. Considering the extremely low cost for the popups and their targeting, such a promotion and marketing instrument is a favourite thing amongst the advertising teams of huge online retail stores.

Nonetheless, such a rewarding scheme could not be missed by virus developers. Option to demonstrate the popup ads forcibly to the targets of malware attack is an excellent basis for malevolent manipulations with the popup advertisements. And Serterq.top ads is among hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a info for the Serterq.top
SiteSerterq.top
HostingAS14061 DigitalOcean, LLC
Netherlands, Amsterdam
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address178.62.225.201
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorWizy, Robotzone, Mediaadvisor
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Serterq.top virus?

There are a huge amount of ways of getting infected by the adware that cause the Serterq.top popups storm. A lion’s part of this virus 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 delivered as a legal bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A number of individuals often use the dubious programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, various tools that are free of cost, and even hacked programs. Every one of these types of software are unsafe, since it is extremely easy to build in a Serterq.top malware under the guise of part of the license hacking script, or as a component of the self-made algoritm within the Windows optimization tool.

Serterq.top popup malware can additionally be concealed in the advertisement somewhere on the unusual website. Such sites are typically full of intense and blinking ads, and their proprietors typically approve any kind of promotions to be placed on their page. Thus, clicking on such banners is a risky thing: only the advertisement provider knows what will happen when you click this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you can also receive something a lot more threatening, 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 Serterq.top pop-up virus may provoke a wide range of problems on your PC. Distracting is not the only problem – pop-up notifications may present you the promotions, where you are offered to get one more strange program, or “a effective security tool”. Scareware is often distributed with the last motto. Potentially unwanted applications, in turn, may have spyware functionality. And it is very hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a normal one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and dubious antiviruses, popup-related banners are also chosen as a spreading method by various trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of actions of such malware is 100% unpleasant, and can cost you hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not clicking these promotions, they can be clicked by whoever who also uses your computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the things may become much more serious, and it will be much harder to deal with it without data loss. It is recommended to remove the viruses with antivirus applications as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Serterq.top pop-up advertisements?

The manual of Serterq.top adware removal includes 2 sections. Initially, we need to remove the malware, and then correct the consequences of its action. The removal task is really simple, due to the fact that it can be performed even with using Microsoft Defender – anti-virus tool that is available on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nonetheless, because of its significant resources utilization, as well as some errors that can be critical for some groups of users, Defender is frequently disabled by the users, so its use is likely impossible. Moreover, various trojan viruses are capable to turn off the embedded antivirus. It is much better to make use of the separated program that will not have such exposures.

I would certainly recommend you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven security device that will surely remove the malware from your PC and also make an invulnerable shield with a Proactive protection feature. But let’s take care of Serterq.top adware first.

Removing Serterq.top 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 Serterq.top 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 connect the appropriate DNS while connecting to the web page you want. 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 things much more difficult to restore, particularly without the anti-malware software. A lot of adware variations that are used to show you the Serterq.top pop-up ads are altering the deep browser configurations, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to fix your browser settings after your PC was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly collapse soon. Sometimes, you will see no crash, but huge lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 seconds, and after that it will be back to the normal, till you attempt to open settings 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 Serterq.top Pop-ups?

Name: Serterq.top

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