Remove Thehotposts Virus — How to Fix Guide

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Thehotposts pop-up notifications may show up unexpectedly, covering the subject of the site you checked or opening your web browser when you do not desire it to be opened.

Clicking the Thehotposts advertisement may cause the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this article, you will see the guide of Thehotposts popups removal in a couple of methods, and also inspecting your computer for additional malware presence.

GridinSoft Anti-Malware Review
It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!
Removing Thehotposts 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 Thehotposts pop-ups?

Thehotposts popups are a result of adware action. Adware is a sort of malware that presents you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click ads, which creates a substantial amount of revenue for adware representatives. These ads might have explicit composition, or have a web link to malevolent content/website, due to the fact that adware maintainers have no reason to inspect the goodness of the content they are going to reveal – their solitary target is cash.

Thehotposts push notification

Thehotposts push notification.

Pop-up promotions itself is an excellent, affordable and also very effective advertising solution1. It allows the seller to attach 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 receive a pop-up alert that the TV set he wishes to purchase is provided at the online shop he/she visited earlier with a 15% price cut, one will surely use this opportunity and purchase it. Taking into consideration the exceptionally low price for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising method is a favorite thing amidst the advertising teams of huge online sellers.

Nevertheless, such a rewarding plan could not be missed by virus creators. Ability to show the popup advertisements by force to the targets of malware attack is a perfect basis for malevolent manipulations with the popup promotions. And Thehotposts.com promotions is one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a summary for the Thehotposts site
Site Thehotposts.com
Hosting AS9002 RETN Limited
Netherlands, Amsterdam
Infection Type Adware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address 139.45.197.162
Symptoms Annoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behavior Ultimate, Techsys, Blackblog
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Thehotposts virus?

There are a plenty of ways of getting infected by the adware that create the Thehotposts popups storm. A lion’s part of this virus cases is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Free software may additionally be downloaded from the official website, and the adware is delivered as a legit bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A lot of users frequently utilize the uncertain programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, various tools that are free, or perhaps hacked programs. Every one of these sorts of software are unsafe, since it is quite simple to build in a Thehotposts malware under the cover of part of the license hacking script, or as a component of the self-made algoritm within the Windows optimization tool.

Thehotposts popup malware may likewise be concealed in the promotion somewhere on the unusual web page. Such web pages are usually filled with colorful and blinking ads, and their proprietors usually accept any type of promos to be published on their page. Thus, clicking such banners is a shot in the dark: only the ad contractor realizes what will occur when you click this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you may also get something a lot more unsafe, 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 applications, like Thehotposts pop-up virus may provoke a wide range of troubles on your personal computer. Distracting is not the only problem – pop-up notifications may display you the ads, where you are offered to download one more strange program, or “a perfect anti-malware tool”. Scareware is often spread with the last motto. Potentially unwanted applications, in turn, can have spyware functionality. And it is quite hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a normal one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and pseudo antiviruses, popup-related ads are also chosen as a distribution method by different trojan viruses, for instance – coin miners. The consequences of actions of such viruses is 100% unwanted, and can cost you hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not tapping these advertisements, they can 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 data loss. It is recommended to wipe out the viruses with anti-malware applications as soon as possible.

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

The manual of Thehotposts adware removal includes 2 sections. First, we need to deal with the malware, and afterwards repair the consequences of its activity. The removal procedure is pretty simple, because it may be performed even with using Microsoft Defender – anti-virus program that is available on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nonetheless, because of its significant resources consumption, as well as some failures that can be crucial for some groups of users, Defender is frequently disabled by the users, so its use is likely impossible. In addition, a wide range of trojan viruses can disable the embedded antivirus. It is much better to make use of the separated program that will not have such vulnerabilities.

I’d recommend you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven anti-malware tool that will undoubtedly remove the malware from your PC and make an impenetrable cover with a Proactive protection function. But let’s deal with Thehotposts adware initially.

Removing Thehotposts 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 Thehotposts 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 be connected the correct DNS while connecting to the site you need. Create a text file named “hosts” on your desktop, after that open it and fill it with the following lines3:

# 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 trouble that makes the things a lot more difficult to restore, specifically without the anti-malware program. A lot of adware versions that are used to show you the Thehotposts pop-up advertisements are altering the deep browser configurations, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to change your browser settings after your machine was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will crash quickly. In certain cases, you will see no crash, but huge lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 secs, and then 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 Thehotposts Pop-ups?

Name: Thehotposts

Description: Thehotposts - 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 Thehotposts.com push notifications?” or “why do Thehotposts.com pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Thehotposts 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
3.5 (4 votes)
Comments Rating 0 (0 reviews)

References

  1. More about pop-up advertisements on Wikipedia.
  2. GridinSoft Anti-Malware review and the reasons why I suggest 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.

Leave a Reply

Sending