Remove Theaddinshop Virus — How to Fix Guide

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Theaddinshop pop-up alerts may appear unexpectedly, covering the material of the site you checked or opening your web browser when you don’t wish it to be opened.

Clicking on the Theaddinshop promotion may trigger the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this guide, you will see the guideline of Theaddinshop popups clearing in various ways, as well as inspecting your computer for additional malware existence.

GridinSoft Anti-Malware Review
It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!
Removing Theaddinshop 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.
Gridinsoft Anti-Malware 6-day trial available.
EULA | Privacy Policy | 10% Off Coupon
Subscribe to our Telegram channel to be the first to know about news and our exclusive materials on information security.

What are Theaddinshop pop-ups?

Theaddinshop popups are a consequence of adware activity. Adware is a sort of malware that demonstrates to you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which produces a substantial volume of earnings for adware distributors. These ads might contain sometimes shocking material, or have a link to malevolent content/website, since adware maintainers have no purpose to check the goodness of the material they are going to reveal – their single target is cash.

Theaddinshop push notification

Theaddinshop push notification.

Pop-up promotions itself is an excellent, cheap and extremely efficient advertising method1. It makes it possible for the seller to attach the customers’ attention to their website, as well as the buyers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they intend to purchase. When the consumer will receive a pop-up alert that the TV set he desires to purchase is available at the online shop he/she saw previously with a 15% price cut, one will definitely use this possibility and get it. Considering the incredibly small cost for the popups and their targeting, such a promotion and marketing instrument is a favorite thing amongst the advertising teams of huge online stores.

Nevertheless, such a profitable scheme could not be missed by malware creators. Option to show the popup ads by force to the people of malware invasion is an ideal basis for malicious manipulations with the popup ads. And Theaddinshop.com advertisements is just one of hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a details for the Theaddinshop site
SiteTheaddinshop.com
HostingAS13335 Cloudflare, Inc.
United States, San Francisco
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address104.21.20.235
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorPsoufauh, Winconcos, Greatcaptchahere
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Theaddinshop virus?

There are a huge amount of methods of becoming infected by the adware that result in the Theaddinshop popups storm. A lion’s part of this malware cases is after the free software or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Freeware can also be downloaded from the official website, and the adware is supplied as a legitimate bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A lot of people frequently work with the dubious programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, a wide range of apps that are free, and even hacked programs. Every one of these sorts of software are unsafe, because it is quite easy to build in a Theaddinshop malware under the guise of part of the license hacking script, or as a component of the self-made algoritm inside of the Windows optimization tool.

Theaddinshop popup virus may likewise be concealed in the ad somewhere on the unusual web page. Such sites are typically packed with bright and blinking ads, and their proprietors typically permit any promotions to be published on their web page. For this reason, clicking such banners is a risky thing: only the advertisement contractor knows what will occur when you press this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you can additionally receive something a lot more damaging, 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

Potentially undesirable applications, like Theaddinshop pop-up virus can initiate a lot of different troubles on your PC. Distracting is not the only effect – pop-up notifications can display you the promotions, where you are offered to download one more unknown application, or “a effective anti-malware tool”. Scareware is usually spread with the use of the last slogun. Potentially unwanted applications, in turn, may have spyware functionality. And it is pretty hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a legit one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and fake antiviruses, popup-related banners are also chosen as a spreading way by various trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of actions of such malware is 100% unwanted, and can cost you several hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not clicking these ads, they can be clicked by whoever who also makes use of your 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 eliminate the viruses with antivirus applications as soon as possible.

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

The guide of Theaddinshop adware elimination consists of 2 parts. First, we need to get rid of the malware, and after that fix the effects of its activity. The elimination process is really simple, since it can be done even with using Microsoft Defender – security tool that is present on all computers with Windows 8/10. However, because of its substantial resources usage, along with some errors that can be critical for some categories of individuals, Defender is often turned off by the users, so its use is probably impossible. What’s more, various trojan viruses are capable to disable the embedded antivirus. It is much better to make use of the separated program that will not have such exposures.

I’d advise you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven security device that will undoubtedly wipe out the viruses from your computer and also make an impenetrable cover with a Proactive protection feature. However, let’s deal with Theaddinshop adware initially.

Removing Theaddinshop 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 Theaddinshop 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 web browser will be connected the proper DNS while connecting to the website you need. Create a text file named “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.

Nonetheless, there is one problem that makes things much harder to restore, particularly without the anti-malware program. Most of adware versions that are used to show you the Theaddinshop pop-up advertisements are adjusting the deep browser configurations, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to change your browser settings after your machine was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly crash quickly. In some cases, 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 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 Theaddinshop Pop-ups?

Name: Theaddinshop

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

Sending
User Review
3.25 (4 votes)
Comments Rating 0 (0 reviews)

References

  1. More about pop-up advertisements 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.

Leave a Reply

Sending