Remove Stopadblocker Pop-up Virus — How to Remove?

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Stopadblocker pop-up notifications may appear unexpectedly, covering the post of the website you visited or opening your web browser when you don’t want it to be opened.

Clicking on the Stopadblocker promotion may trigger the injection of various malware or unwanted programs. In this article, you will see the guide of Stopadblocker popups clearing in several methods, as well as checking your computer for extra viruses presence.

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What are Stopadblocker pop-ups?

Stopadblocker popups are a result of adware action. Adware is a sort of malware that presents you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click promotions, which creates a substantial amount of revenue for adware distributors. These advertisements may have sometimes shocking composition, or have a link to malicious content/website, because adware maintainers have no purpose to examine the goodness of the content they are going to reveal – their single target is cash.

Stopadblocker push notification

Stopadblocker push notification.

Pop-up advertising itself is a very good, affordable and extremely successful marketing solution1. It enables the seller to link the buyers’ interest to their site, and the customers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they intend to buy. When the customer will get a pop-up alert that the TV set he wishes to buy is offered at the online store he/she saw previously with a 15% discount, one will undoubtedly use this opportunity and get it. Taking into consideration the very low price for the popups and their targeting, such a marketing method is a favorite thing among the advertising teams of big internet retail stores.

However, such a profitable plan could not be missed by virus developers. Ability to demonstrate the popup ads by force to the people of malware invasion is a great basis for evil-minded tricks with the popup ads. And Stopadblocker.com advertisements is one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a summary for the Stopadblocker
Site Stopadblocker.com
Hosting AS13335 Cloudflare, Inc.
United States, San Francisco
Infection Type Adware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address 172.67.202.18
Symptoms Annoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behavior Bstnwswrld, Bikemolktwo, News
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Stopadblocker virus?

There are a plenty of ways of getting infected by the adware that lead to the Stopadblocker popups storm. A lion’s part of this computer virus instances is after the free software or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Freeware can likewise be downloaded from the official web page, and the adware is delivered as a legit bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A huge amount of people oftentimes use the dubious programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, different apps that are free, or perhaps hacked programs. All of these sorts of applications are dangerous, because it is very simple to include a Stopadblocker 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.

Stopadblocker popup malware can likewise be concealed in the ad somewhere on the odd web page. Such web pages are typically packed with intense and blinking ads, and their owners generally approve any kind of promos to be placed on their web page. Therefore, clicking on such banners is a shot in the dark: only the advertisement provider realizes what will happen when you click this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you can also get something a lot more unsafe, like ransomware or coin miner; the big share of coin miners distribution is exactly after the malicious advertisements.

People dislike popups

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

Potentially undesirable applications, like Stopadblocker popup virus can provoke a wide range of different troubles on your PC. Distracting is not the only problem – pop-up notifications can present you the promotions, where you are offered to get one more dubious program, or “a perfect anti-malware tool”. Scareware is usually distributed with the use of the last motto. Potentially unwanted programs, 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 PUPs and pseudo antiviruses, popup-related promotions are also exploited 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 interacting with these advertisements, they may be clicked by whoever who also uses your personal computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the things can become much more serious, and it will be much harder to deal with it without data and money loss. It is recommended to eliminate the viruses with antivirus programs as soon as possible.

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

The guide of Stopadblocker adware elimination contains 2 parts. Initially, we need to deal with the malware, and after that fix the results of its activity. The removal task is pretty simple, since it may be done even with making use of Microsoft Defender – security tool that is available on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nonetheless, due to its significant resources usage, as well as some bugs that can be serious for some groups of individuals, Defender is often turned off by the users, so its utilization is most likely impossible. In addition, a wide range of trojan viruses have the ability to switch off the embedded antivirus. It is better to use the separated program that will not have such weakness.

I would certainly recommend you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven security device that will undoubtedly exterminate the malware from your personal computer and also make an invulnerable cover with a Proactive protection function. However, let’s deal with Stopadblocker adware initially.

Removing Stopadblocker 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 Stopadblocker 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 web browsers are reset, you need to make sure that your browser will definitely be connected the right DNS while connecting to the website you need. Create a text file titled “hosts” on your computer’s desktop, then 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.

However, there is one problem that makes things much more difficult to fix, specifically without the anti-malware program. Most of adware variations that are used to show you the Stopadblocker pop-up promotions are altering the deep browser settings, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to fix your browser settings after your system was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will collapse soon. In certain cases, you will see no crash, however, huge lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 seconds, and after that it will be back to the typical, until you try 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 Stopadblocker Pop-ups?

Name: Stopadblocker

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