Remove Top-dating-center Virus — How to Fix Guide

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Top-dating-center pop-up alerts may appear unexpectedly, covering the content of the page you checked or opening your web browser when you don’t need it to be opened.

Clicking on the Top-dating-center ad can lead to the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this guide, you will see the guide of Top-dating-center popups removal in a couple of manners, as well as examining your system for extra viruses existence.

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What are Top-dating-center pop-ups?

Top-dating-center popups are a consequence of adware activity. Adware is a sort of malware that shows you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which produces a significant amount of revenue for adware distributors. These advertisements may consist of explicit information, or have a web link to malicious content/website, considering that adware maintainers have no reason to check the goodness of the content they are going to show – their single target is cash.

Top-dating-center push notification

Top-dating-center push notification.

Pop-up marketing itself is an excellent, low-cost and extremely successful marketing instrument1. It makes it possible for the vendor to attach the customers’ interest to their site, as well as the buyers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they want to buy. When the person will get a pop-up notification that the TV set he wishes to purchase is offered at the online store he/she saw earlier with a 15% discount, one will certainly use this chance and get it. Taking into consideration the very low cost for the popups and their targeting, such a marketing tool is a favourite thing amidst the marketing teams of big internet stores.

However, such a successful strategy could not be missed by virus developers. Potential to demonstrate the popup advertisements forcibly to the targets of malware invasion is a great basis for evil-minded tricks with the popup ads. And Top-dating-center.com ads is one of hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a summary for the Top-dating-center site
Site Top-dating-center.com
Hosting AS20473 The Constant Company, LLC
Netherlands, Amsterdam
Infection Type Adware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address 45.32.236.34
Symptoms Annoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behavior Theresults, Renewappwno1, Inathimfnth
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Top-dating-center virus?

There are a number of methods of becoming contaminated by the adware that result in the Top-dating-center popups storm. A lion’s part of this computer virus cases is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Free software may also be downloaded from the main site, and the adware is supplied as a legal bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A number of users oftentimes work with the unreliable programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, a wide range of apps that are free of cost, and even hacked programs. All of these types of software are unsafe, since it is very simple to include a Top-dating-center malware under the guise of part of the license hacking script, or as a component of the self-made algoritm within the Windows optimization tool.

Top-dating-center popup malware may also be concealed in the promotion somewhere on the odd web page. Such websites are usually filled with intense and blinking ads, and their owners usually accept any type of promotions to be posted on their page. Therefore, clicking on such banners is a shot in the dark: only the ad contractor knows what will occur when you click this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you can additionally receive something a lot more damaging, like ransomware or coin miner; the large share of coin miners distribution is exactly after the malicious ads.

People dislike popups

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

Potentially undesirable applications, like Top-dating-center popup virus can cause a lot of different problems on your personal computer. Distracting is not the only effect – pop-ups can display you the banners, where you are offered to get another dubious program, or “a amazing anti-malware tool”. Scareware is often distributed with the use of the last motto. Potentially unwanted programs, in turn, may have spyware functions. And it is quite hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a good one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and dubious antiviruses, popup-related ads are also used as a spreading way by different trojan viruses, for instance – 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 interacting with these banners, they can be clicked by someone who also makes use of your personal computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the situation can become much more serious, and it will be much harder to solve it without information loss. It is recommended to remove the viruses with anti-malware programs as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Top-dating-center pop-up advertisements?

The manual of Top-dating-center adware removal includes 2 sections. Initially, we need to remove the malware, and after that repair the consequences of its action. The removal process is very easy, due to the fact that it may be executed even with the use of Microsoft Defender – anti-malware software that is available on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, as a result of its huge resources consumption, along with some defects that may be critical for some groups of users, Defender is often turned off by the users, so its use is most likely impossible. Furthermore, a wide range of trojan viruses are able to turn off the embedded antivirus. It is much better to use the separated program that will not have such vulnerabilities.

I’d advise you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven antivirus device that will surely exterminate the viruses from your computer and also make an invulnerable cover with a Proactive protection function. But let’s deal with Top-dating-center adware initially.

Removing Top-dating-center 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 Top-dating-center 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 ensure that your web browser will be connected the proper DNS while connecting to the site you want. Make a text file named “hosts” on your computer’s desktop, then open it and fill it with the following text3:

# 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 the things a lot more difficult to restore, particularly without the anti-malware program. The majority of adware variations that are utilized to show you the Top-dating-center pop-up promotions are altering the deep browser settings, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to fix your browser settings after your PC was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will collapse quickly. Sometimes, you will see no crash, but significant lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 secs, and then it will be back to the normal, until you attempt 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.

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 Top-dating-center Pop-ups?

Name: Top-dating-center

Description: Top-dating-center - 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 Top-dating-center.com push notifications?” or “why do Top-dating-center.com pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Top-dating-center 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 advertisements on Wikipedia.
  2. GridinSoft Anti-Malware review and also 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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