Sportsearchmaster.com Ads Removal Guide — How to Fix It?

Written by Wilbur Woodham

Unwanted Sportsearchmaster.com pop-up notices may appear unexpectedly, covering the post of the page you checked or opening your browser when you do not want it to be opened. Clicking the Sportsearchmaster.com pop-up ad can lead to the injection of various malware or unwanted programs. In this article, you will see the tutorial of Sportsearchmaster.com popups removal in multiple manners, and also examining your PC for additional viruses existence.

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What are Sportsearchmaster.com pop-ups?

Sportsearchmaster.com popups are a consequence 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 major amount of earnings for adware suppliers. These promotions may include explicit content, or have a web link to harmful content/website, since adware maintainers have no purpose to check the goodness of the web content they are going to show – their solitary target is money.

Sportsearchmaster.com push notification

Sportsearchmaster.com push notification.

Pop-up promotions itself is an excellent, affordable and really efficient advertising tool1 It allows the vendor to link the customers’ attention to their site, as well as the buyers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they want to purchase. When the person will receive a pop-up notification that the TV set he desires to purchase is available at the online store he/she visited previously with a 15% discount, one will undoubtedly use this chance and buy it. Considering the incredibly low price for the popups and their targeting, such a marketing tool is a favourite thing amongst the marketing teams of big internet retail stores.

Nonetheless, such a rewarding strategy could not be missed by virus creators. Option to show the popup ads by force to the people of malware attack is an ideal basis for malevolent adjustments with the popup ads. And Sportsearchmaster.com advertisements is one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a short summary for the Sportsearchmaster.com
SiteSportsearchmaster.com
HostingAS13335 Cloudflare, Inc.
United States, San Francisco
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address172.67.157.216
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorIncognitosearchtech.com, Articlessea1.xyz, Featuremylife.info
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Sportsearchmaster.com virus?

There are a number of ways of getting infected by the adware that lead to the Sportsearchmaster.com popups storm. A lion’s part of this malware incidents is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Freeware can likewise be downloaded from the official web page, and the adware is delivered as a legitimate bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A huge amount of people oftentimes make use of the unreliable programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, various apps that are free, or perhaps hacked programs. All of these kinds of programs are risky, since it is extremely easy to include a Sportsearchmaster.com malware under the cover of part of the license hacking script, or as a part of the self-made algoritm within the Windows optimization tool.

Sportsearchmaster.com popup malware can also be hidden in the promotion somewhere on the strange web page. Such websites are typically loaded with intense and blinking ads, and their proprietors often permit any type of promos to be placed on their page. Hence, clicking on such banners is a risky thing: only the advertisement provider realizes what will happen when you press this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you can additionally get something far more dangerous, like ransomware or coin miner; the big share of coin miners distribution is exactly after the malicious promotions.

People dislike popups

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

How can I get rid of Sportsearchmaster.com pop-up advertisements?

The manual of Sportsearchmaster.com adware removal includes 2 sections. Initially, we need to get rid of the malware, and after that take care of the effects of its activity. The elimination procedure is quite easy, due to the fact that it can be done even with making use of Microsoft Defender – security software that is present on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nonetheless, as a result of its huge resources usage, as well as some problems that may be serious for some kinds of individuals, Defender is frequently disabled by the users, so its usage is probably impossible. Furthermore, different trojan viruses are capable to disable the embedded antivirus. It is better to use the separated program that will not have such weakness.

I’d advise you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven antivirus device that will definitely eliminate the malware from your system and create an impenetrable cover with a Proactive protection function. But let’s manage Sportsearchmaster.com adware initially.

Removing Sportsearchmaster.com 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 Sportsearchmaster.com 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 browser will be connected the correct DNS while connecting to the site you need. 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.

Nevertheless, there is one problem that makes things a lot harder to restore, specifically without the anti-malware software. The majority of adware versions that are utilized to show you the Sportsearchmaster.com 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. In certain cases, you will see no crash, but large lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 secs, and then it will be back to the normal, till 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 Sportsearchmaster.com Pop-ups?

Name: Sportsearchmaster.com

Description: Sportsearchmaster.com - 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 Sportsearchmaster.com push notifications?” or “why do Sportsearchmaster.com pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Sportsearchmaster.com 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 review and also the reasons why I recommend 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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