Remove Substandid Pop-up Virus — How to Remove?

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Substandid pop-up notifications may show up unexpectedly, covering the content of the site you explored or opening your web browser when you do not want it to be opened.

Clicking the Substandid advertisement can lead to the injection of different malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the guideline of Substandid popups removal in several ways, and also inspecting your computer for additional malware presence.

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What are Substandid pop-ups?

Substandid popups are a consequence of adware activity. Adware is a type of malware that suggests you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which generates a major volume of income for adware distributors. These ads may consist of explicit composition, or have a web link to malevolent content/website, because adware maintainers have no purpose to inspect the goodness of the web content they are going to reveal – their single target is cash.

Substandid push notification

Substandid push notification.

Pop-up promotions itself is a good, affordable and very successful advertising method1. It allows the seller to link 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 get a pop-up alert that the TV set he likes to buy is provided at the online shop he/she visited earlier with a 15% discount, one will undoubtedly use this chance and get it. Considering the very low cost for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising and marketing instrument is a much-loved thing among the marketing departments of big online retailers.

However, such a successful system could not be missed by virus developers. Option to show the popup ads by force to the targets of malware invasion is an excellent basis for malevolent manipulations with the popup ads. And Substandid.space promotions is among hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a info for the Substandid
Site Substandid.space
Hosting AS14618 Amazon.com, Inc.
United States, Ashburn
Infection Type Adware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address 52.86.219.129
Symptoms Annoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behavior Agreatplea, Regionalwinsite, Mediagate
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Substandid virus?

There are a lot of ways of getting infected by the adware that cause the Substandid popups tornado. A lion’s part of this malware cases is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Free software can likewise be downloaded from the main web page, and the adware is supplied as a legit bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A huge amount of users frequently utilize the unreliable programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, various tools that are free of cost, and even hacked programs. All of these sorts of software are unsafe, because it is quite easy to build in a Substandid malware under the guise of part of the license hacking script, or as a part of the self-made algoritm within the Windows optimization tool.

Substandid popup virus may likewise be hidden in the promotion somewhere on the odd site. Such websites are usually filled with colorful and blinking ads, and their owners typically accept any type of promotions to be placed on their page. Hence, clicking such banners is a risky thing: only the ad provider knows what will occur when you press this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you can additionally receive something far more risky, like ransomware or coin miner; the large 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 programs, like Substandid popup virus can initiate a lot of different problems on your PC. Distracting is not the only problem – pop-up notifications may display you the banners, where you are offered to download another unknown application, or “a amazing security tool”. Scareware is usually distributed with the last slogun. Potentially unwanted programs, in turn, may have spyware functionality. And it is pretty hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a legit one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and dubious antiviruses, popup-related promotions are also exploited as a distribution method by various trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such viruses is 100% unpleasant, and can cost you hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not interacting with these banners, they may be clicked by someone who also makes use of 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 information loss. It is recommended to eliminate the viruses with anti-malware programs as soon as possible.

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

The guide of Substandid adware elimination includes 2 sections. First, we need to eliminate the malware, and then take care of the results of its action. The removal process is quite simple, because it can be executed even with the use of Microsoft Defender – security program that is available on all computers with Windows 8/10. However, due to its significant resources consumption, as well as some problems that can be crucial for some types of users, Defender is often turned off by the users, so its usage is most likely impossible. Additionally, various trojan viruses have the ability to shut off the embedded antivirus. It is much better to use the separated program that will not have such vulnerabilities.

I would certainly recommend you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven anti-malware device that will definitely exterminate the viruses from your personal computer and make an invulnerable cover with a Proactive protection feature. However, let’s deal with Substandid adware initially.

Removing Substandid 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 Substandid 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 definitely be connected the right DNS while connecting to the web page you want. Make a text file titled “hosts” on your computer’s 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 repair, particularly without the anti-malware software. The majority of adware variations that are utilized to show you the Substandid pop-up promotions are altering the deep browser setups, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to change your browser settings after your computer was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will collapse soon. In some cases, you will see no crash, however, large lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 seconds, and after that 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.

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 Substandid Pop-ups?

Name: Substandid

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