Remove TheActualStories Pop-up Ads — How to Fix Gude

TheActualStories pop-up notifications can appear out of the blue, covering the post of the site you went to or opening your browser when you don’t need it to be opened.

Clicking the TheActualStories advertisement can cause the injection of various malware or unwanted programs. In this guide, you will see the tutorial of TheActualStories popups clearing in various ways, and also examining your PC for other malware presence.

It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!

Removing TheActualStories manually may take hours and may damage your PC in the process. I recommend you to download GridinSoft Anti-Malware for threats removal. Allows to complete scan and cure your PC during the trial period.

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What are TheActualStories pop-ups?

TheActualStories popups are an outcome of adware activity. Adware is a type of malware that presents you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click ads, which produces a massive amount of revenue for adware distributors. These advertisements might include sometimes shocking content, or have a web link to harmful content/website, because adware maintainers have no reason to inspect the goodness of the material they are going to reveal – their single target is cash.

TheActualStories push notification.

Pop-up marketing itself is an excellent, cheap and extremely effective advertising solution¹. It enables the seller to attach the buyers’ interest to their website, as well as the customers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they wish to purchase. When the customer will get a pop-up alert that the TV set he wishes to purchase is available at the online store he/she visited previously with a 15% price cut, one will definitely use this chance and purchase it. Taking into consideration the exceptionally low price for the popups and their targeting, such a promotion and marketing instrument is a much-loved thing amongst the advertising teams of big online sellers.

Nonetheless, such a profitable system could not be missed by malware developers. Potential to show the popup ads forcibly to the targets of malware attack is a perfect basis for evil-minded tricks with the popup ads. And Theactualstories.com promotions is one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a short info for the TheActualStories

How have I got the TheActualStories virus?

There are a lot of ways of getting infected by the adware that trigger the TheActualStories popups storm. A lion’s part of this computer virus cases is after the free software or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Free software may also be downloaded from the official web page, and the adware is delivered as a legal bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A plenty of individuals regularly utilize the uncertain programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, various apps that are free of cost, or even hacked programs. All of these sorts of programs are unsafe, due to the fact that it is extremely easy to integrate a TheActualStories 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.

TheActualStories popup malware can additionally be concealed in the promotion somewhere on the unusual website. Such web pages are in most cases full of intense and blinking ads, and their owners typically accept any type of promotions to be posted on their web page. Hence, clicking such banners is a risky thing: only the advertisement contractor knows what will occur when you click this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you can likewise receive something much more risky, like ransomware or coin miner; the large share of coin miners circulation is exactly after the malicious promotions.

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

Potentially unwanted programs, like TheActualStories pop-up virus can provoke a wide range of different troubles on your personal computer. Distracting is not the single problem – pop-ups can present you the banners, where you are offered to get another strange program, or “a effective anti-malware tool”. Scareware is often distributed with the use of the last motto. Potentially unwanted applications, in turn, may have spyware functions. And it is pretty hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a normal one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and fake antiviruses, popup-related advertisements are also exploited as a spreading method by different trojan viruses, for instance – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such malware is 100% unwanted, and can cost you hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not clicking these promotions, they may be clicked by whoever who also uses your 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 antivirus programs as soon as possible.

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

The tutorial of TheActualStories adware elimination consists of 2 sections. Initially, we need to exterminate the malware, and then take care of the results of its action. The removal procedure is really easy, since it can be done even with making use of Microsoft Defender – anti-virus software that is available on all computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, as a result of its substantial resources usage, as well as some bugs that can be critical for some kinds of users, Defender is often turned off by the users, so its utilization is likely impossible. In addition, a wide range of trojan viruses are capable to switch off the embedded antivirus. It is better to make use of the separated program that will not have such weakness.

I’d suggest you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware² – a well-proven security tool that will definitely remove the viruses from your PC and make an impenetrable shield with a Proactive protection feature. But let’s deal with TheActualStories adware initially.

Removing TheActualStories 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.

• 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.

• When the scan is over, you may choose the action for each detected virus. For all files of TheActualStories malware the default option is “Delete”. Press “Apply” to finish the malware removal.

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. 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. In the next screen, find the “Refresh Firefox” option :

After choosing this option, you will see the next message :

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 definitely connect the right DNS while connecting to the website you need. Make a text file named “hosts” on your desktop, then open it and fill it with the following lines³:

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 trouble that makes the things much harder to restore, specifically without the anti-malware software. A lot of adware variations that are used to show you the TheActualStories pop-up promotions are adjusting the deep browser settings, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to fix your browser settings after your machine was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will crash quickly. Sometimes, you will see no crash, however, large lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 seconds, and afterwards it will be back to the normal, up until you try to open settings once more.

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.

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.

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 TheActualStories Pop-ups?

Name: TheActualStories

Description: TheActualStories - 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 Theactualstories.com push notifications?” or “why do Theactualstories.com pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with TheActualStories 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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1. More about pop-up ads on Wikipedia.
2. GridinSoft Anti-Malware review and the reasons why I recommend it for malware removal.
3. Official Microsoft guide for hosts file reset.