Remove Steno.live Virus — How to Fix Guide

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Steno.live pop-up notices may show up unexpectedly, covering the subject of the site you explored or opening your browser when you do not need it to be opened.

Clicking the Steno.live promotion can lead to the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this article, you will see the guide of Steno.live popups clearing in various ways, and also checking your personal computer for additional malware presence.

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What are Steno.live pop-ups?

Steno.live popups are a result of adware presence. Adware is a sort of malware that suggests you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which produces a significant volume of income for adware representatives. These advertisements might consist of explicit material, or have a link to malicious content/website, considering that adware maintainers have no purpose to examine the goodness of the material they are going to reveal – their single target is money.

Steno.live push notification

Steno.live push notification.

Pop-up advertising itself is an excellent, affordable and also extremely productive advertising tool1. It permits the vendor to attach the buyers’ interest to their website, as well as the customers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they want to buy. When the consumer will receive a pop-up alert that the TV set he wishes to purchase is provided at the online store he/she visited earlier with a 15% price cut, one will surely use this chance and get it. Taking into consideration the extremely low price for the popups and their targeting, such a promotion and marketing instrument is a much-loved thing amidst the advertising departments of huge online retail stores.

Nonetheless, such a successful scheme could not be missed by malware creators. Option to demonstrate the popup advertisements forcibly to the victims of malware invasion is a perfect basis for malevolent manipulations with the popup advertisements. And Steno.live ads is one of hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a short details for the Steno.live
SiteSteno.live
HostingAS14061 DigitalOcean, LLC
United States, Santa Clara
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address147.182.255.121
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorDemonus, Demoneu, News
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Steno.live virus?

There are a plenty of ways of becoming contaminated by the adware that cause the Steno.live popups storm. A lion’s part of this malware cases is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Freeware may likewise be downloaded from the main site, and the adware is provided as a legitimate bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A number of users often use the dubious programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, a wide range of utilities that are free of cost, or perhaps hacked programs. All of these kinds of software are dangerous, due to the fact that it is quite easy to integrate a Steno.live malware under the cover of part of the license hacking script, or as a part of the self-made algoritm inside of the Windows optimization tool.

Steno.live popup virus can also be concealed in the promotion somewhere on the unusual web page. Such sites are usually packed with colorful and blinking advertisements, and their owners typically accept any type of promos to be posted on their web page. Hence, clicking such banners is a shot in the dark: only the ad contractor knows what will happen when you press this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you may likewise receive something far more hazardous, like ransomware or coin miner; the large 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 undesirable programs, like Steno.live pop-up virus may cause a variety of troubles on your PC. Distracting is not the only problem – pop-ups may present you the ads, where you are offered to download one more strange program, or “a effective anti-malware tool”. Scareware is usually spread with the last slogun. Potentially unwanted programs, in turn, can have spyware functions. And it is pretty hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a legit one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and fake antiviruses, popup-related advertisements are also exploited as a distribution way by various trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such viruses is 100% unwanted, and can cost you hundreds or even thousands of dollars. And even if you are not interacting with these promotions, they may be clicked by someone who also uses your personal computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the situation may become much more serious, and it will be much harder to solve it without data and money loss. It is recommended to wipe out the viruses with antivirus applications as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Steno.live pop-up advertisements?

The manual of Steno.live adware removal contains 2 parts. Initially, we need to exterminate the malware, and then correct the effects of its activity. The removal process is very simple, due to the fact that it may be executed even with using Microsoft Defender – security software that is present on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. However, as a result of its significant resources consumption, along with some errors that may be critical for some groups of users, Defender is oftentimes turned off by the users, so its usage is probably impossible. Additionally, different trojan viruses are capable to switch off the embedded antivirus. It is much better to use the separated program that will not have such exposures.

I’d suggest you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven antivirus tool that will certainly eliminate the viruses from your PC and create an invulnerable shield with a Proactive protection function. But let’s deal with Steno.live adware initially.

Removing Steno.live 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 Steno.live 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 ensure that your web browser will connect the proper DNS while connecting to the web page you want. Make a text file named “hosts” on your computer’s 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 problem that makes the things a lot harder to fix, particularly without the anti-malware program. Most of adware versions that are used to show you the Steno.live pop-up advertisements are modifying the deep browser configurations, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to change your browser settings after your computer was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly collapse quickly. Sometimes, you will see no crash, however, significant lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 secs, and then it will be back to the normal, till you attempt to open settings once 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 Steno.live Pop-ups?

Name: Steno.live

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