Smashofferss Ads Removal Guide — How to Fix It?

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Smashofferss pop-up notices can show up unexpectedly, covering the post of the website you visited or opening your browser when you don’t need it to be opened.

Clicking the Smashofferss advertisement can result in the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this guide, you will see the manual of Smashofferss popups clearing in a couple of manners, and also checking your personal computer for other malware existence.

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What are Smashofferss pop-ups?

Smashofferss popups are an effect of adware activity. Adware is a sort of malware that presents you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click ads, which generates a major amount of profit for adware representatives. These ads might have sometimes shocking composition, or have a web link to malicious content/website, since adware maintainers have no reason to inspect the goodness of the web content they are going to reveal – their solitary target is money.

Smashofferss push notification

Smashofferss push notification.

Pop-up marketing itself is an excellent, low-priced and also extremely effective advertising tool1. It enables the seller to attach the customers’ attention to their site, as well as the customers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they intend to purchase. When the consumer will receive a pop-up notification that the TV set he wishes to buy is available at the online shop he/she visited earlier with a 15% price cut, one will certainly use this opportunity and get it. Considering the extremely small cost for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising method is a favourite thing among the advertising teams of large online stores.

However, such a profitable strategy could not be missed by malware developers. Potential to show the popup ads by force to the people of malware attack is a great basis for malicious manipulations with the popup advertisements. And Smashofferss.com promotions is just one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a info for the Smashofferss
SiteSmashofferss.com
HostingAS63023 GTHost
United States, Chicago
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address38.128.66.115
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorAsxerk, News, Ivonch
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Smashofferss virus?

There are a lot of ways of getting contaminated by the adware that lead to the Smashofferss popups tornado. A lion’s part of this virus incidents is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Freeware may likewise be downloaded from the official web page, and the adware is provided as a legitimate bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A lot of people regularly utilize the dubious programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, different apps that are free, or perhaps hacked programs. All of these kinds of programs are unsafe, since it is extremely simple to integrate a Smashofferss 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.

Smashofferss popup virus may likewise be hidden in the promotion somewhere on the unusual web page. Such web pages are generally loaded with bright and blinking ads, and their proprietors usually accept any promos to be published on their page. Therefore, clicking such banners is a risky thing: only the advertisement provider realizes what will occur when you press this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you can additionally get something much more risky, like ransomware or coin miner; the big share of coin miners circulation is exactly after the malicious promotions.

People dislike popups

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

Potentially unwanted applications, like Smashofferss pop-up virus may cause a lot of problems on your computer. Distracting is not the single problem – pop-up notifications may show you the promotions, where you are offered to get another unknown application, or “a amazing anti-malware tool”. Scareware is often distributed with the last motto. Potentially unwanted applications, in turn, may 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 promotions are also chosen as a distribution 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 clicking these ads, they may be clicked by someone who also makes use of 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 information loss. It is recommended to wipe out the viruses with antivirus programs as soon as possible.

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

The guide of Smashofferss adware elimination contains 2 sections. Initially, we need to remove the malware, and afterwards repair the effects of its activity. The removal task is pretty easy, because it can be done even with making use of Microsoft Defender – security program that is available on all computers with Windows 8/10. Nonetheless, as a result of its huge resources consumption, along with some defects that may be crucial for some types of individuals, Defender is frequently disabled by the users, so its utilization is probably impossible. Moreover, various trojan viruses are capable to shut off the embedded antivirus. It is much better to make use of the separated program that will not have such exposures.

I’d suggest you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven anti-malware device that will undoubtedly wipe out the viruses from your system and also create an invulnerable cover with a Proactive protection feature. But let’s deal with Smashofferss adware initially.

Removing Smashofferss 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 Smashofferss 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 be connected the right DNS while connecting to the site you want. Create a text file named “hosts” on your desktop, after that 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 problem that makes the things a lot more difficult to fix, specifically without the anti-malware software. Most of adware variations that are used to show you the Smashofferss 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 PC was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly crash quickly. Sometimes, you will see no crash, however, huge lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 secs, and then it will be back to the normal, until you try 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 Smashofferss Pop-ups?

Name: Smashofferss

Description: Smashofferss - 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 Smashofferss.com push notifications?” or “why do Smashofferss.com pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Smashofferss 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 ads on Wikipedia.
  2. GridinSoft Anti-Malware overview and also the reasons why I suggest 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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