How to remove Smartlink.name pop-ups? — Fix Guide

Smartlink.name pop-up notices may show up out of the blue, covering the material of the website you visited or opening your browser when you don’t desire it to be opened.

Clicking on the Smartlink.name advertisement may cause the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this article, you will see the guide of Smartlink.name popups clearing in a couple of methods, and also examining your computer for extra malware existence.

It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!

Removing Smartlink.name 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.

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What are Smartlink.name pop-ups?

Smartlink.name popups are a consequence of adware activity. Adware is a kind of malware that suggests you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which generates a large volume of earnings for adware suppliers. These ads may consist of explicit material, or have a web link to harmful content/website, due to the fact that adware maintainers have no purpose to inspect the goodness of the material they are going to show – their solitary target is cash.

Smartlink.name push notification.

Pop-up advertising itself is a very good, low-priced and extremely effective marketing method¹. It makes it possible for the vendor to attach the buyers’ interest to their website, as well as the customers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they intend to buy. When the consumer will get a pop-up notification that the TV set he wishes to buy is provided at the online store he/she visited earlier with a 15% discount, one will undoubtedly use this chance and purchase it. Considering the incredibly low price for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising tool is a favorite thing amidst the marketing departments of huge online retailers.

Nevertheless, such a successful strategy could not be missed by malware creators. Potential to demonstrate the popup advertisements by force to the people of malware attack is an excellent basis for malicious tricks with the popup ads. And Smartlink.name advertisements is one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a info for the Smartlink.name site

How have I got the Smartlink.name virus?

There are a number of ways of getting contaminated by the adware that result in the Smartlink.name popups tornado. A lion’s part of this computer virus cases is after the free software or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Free software can likewise be downloaded from the main website, and the adware is provided as a legit bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A plenty of people oftentimes use the uncertain programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, different utilities that are free of cost, or perhaps hacked programs. Every one of these kinds of software are risky, since it is quite easy to build in a Smartlink.name malware under the cover of part of the license hacking script, or as a component of the self-made algoritm within the Windows optimization tool.

Smartlink.name popup virus can additionally be hidden in the advertisement somewhere on the strange web page. Such sites are typically full of bright and blinking advertisements, and their proprietors generally permit any promotions to be posted on their page. For this reason, clicking on such banners is a shot in the dark: only the ad provider knows what will occur when you press this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you can likewise receive something much more threatening, like ransomware or coin miner; the big share of coin miners distribution is exactly after the malicious promotions.

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

Potentially unwanted programs, like Smartlink.name popup virus may initiate a wide range of problems on your computer. Distracting is not the only problem – pop-up notifications can present you the banners, where you are offered to get another strange application, or “a effective anti-malware tool”. Scareware is usually distributed with the use of the last slogun. Potentially unwanted applications, in turn, can have spyware functionality. And it is pretty hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a good one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and dubious antiviruses, popup-related ads are also chosen as a spreading method by different trojan viruses, for instance – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such viruses is 100% unwanted, and can cost you several hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not tapping these promotions, they can be clicked by whoever who also makes use of your personal computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the things may become much more serious, and it will be much harder to solve it without information loss. It is recommended to eliminate the viruses with antivirus applications as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Smartlink.name pop-up advertisements?

The guide of Smartlink.name adware clearing consists of 2 parts. Initially, we need to remove the malware, and after that correct the effects of its activity. The removal process is quite easy, because it may be performed even with using Microsoft Defender – anti-malware software that is present on all computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, because of its significant resources usage, as well as some failures that can be serious for some categories of individuals, Defender is frequently disabled by the users, so its utilization is probably impossible. Additionally, a variety of trojan viruses are capable to turn off the embedded antivirus. It is better to make use of the separated program that will not have such weakness.

I would certainly suggest you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware² – a well-proven security device that will surely erase the malware from your PC and also make an impenetrable shield with a Proactive protection function. But let’s handle Smartlink.name adware first.

Removing Smartlink.name 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.

• 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.

• When the scan is over, you may choose the action for each detected virus. For all files of Smartlink.name malware the default option is “Delete”. Press “Apply” to finish the malware removal.

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. 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. In the next screen, find the “Refresh Firefox” option :

After choosing this option, you will see the next message :

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 web browser will connect the right DNS while connecting to the site you want. Make a text file named “hosts” on your computer’s desktop, after that open it and fill it with the following content³:

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 fix, particularly without the anti-malware software. Most of adware variants that are utilized to show you the Smartlink.name pop-up advertisements are modifying the deep browser settings, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to change your browser settings after your system was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will crash soon. In some cases, you will see no crash, but huge lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 seconds, and then it will be back to the typical, 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.

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.

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 Smartlink.name Pop-ups?

Name: Smartlink.name

Description: Smartlink.name - 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 Smartlink.name push notifications?” or “why do Smartlink.name pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Smartlink.name 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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1. More about pop-up advertisements on Wikipedia.
2. GridinSoft Anti-Malware review and also the reasons why I advise it for malware elimination.
3. Official Microsoft guide for hosts file reset.