TopFreeArticles Ads Removal Guide — How to Fix It?

TopFreeArticles pop-up alerts can show up out of the blue, covering the content of the page you visited or opening your browser when you don’t want it to be opened.

Clicking the TopFreeArticles advertisement may result in the injection of different malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the guideline of TopFreeArticles popups clearing in various methods, as well as inspecting your PC for extra viruses existence.

What are TopFreeArticles pop-ups?

TopFreeArticles popups are a result of adware action. Adware is a type of malware that presents you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which creates a massive volume of income for adware representatives. These promotions might have sometimes shocking material, or have a link to malicious content/website, considering that adware maintainers have no reason to check the goodness of the material they are going to show – their single target is cash.

TopFreeArticles push notification.

Pop-up promotions itself is a very good, affordable and very successful marketing method¹. It permits the vendor to attach the buyers’ interest to their site, and the buyers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they wish to buy. When the consumer will get a pop-up alert that the TV set he desires to purchase is available at the online shop he/she checked out previously with a 15% discount, one will definitely use this opportunity and buy it. Taking into consideration the extremely small cost for the popups and their targeting, such a marketing method is a favorite thing among the advertising teams of big online retail stores.

Nevertheless, such a rewarding system could not be missed by virus creators. Potential to show the popup advertisements by force to the victims of malware attack is a great basis for evil-minded manipulations with the popup promotions. And Topfreearticles.xyz promotions is just one of hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a info for the TopFreeArticles site

How have I got the TopFreeArticles virus?

There are a plenty of methods of getting infected by the adware that result in the TopFreeArticles popups tornado. A lion’s part of this virus cases is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Freeware may also be downloaded from the official website, and the adware is presented as a legal bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A plenty of individuals regularly work with the dubious programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, various utilities that are free, or even hacked programs. All of these kinds of software are dangerous, due to the fact that it is quite simple to include a TopFreeArticles malware under the cover of part of the license hacking script, or as a part of the self-made algoritm inside of the Windows optimization tool.

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

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

The tutorial of TopFreeArticles adware elimination consists of 2 sections. Initially, we need to exterminate the malware, and then take care of the results of its activity. The elimination task is quite easy, due to the fact that it may be done even with using Microsoft Defender – anti-virus program that is available on all computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, because of its huge resources usage, as well as some bugs that may be critical for some categories of individuals, Defender is frequently disabled by the users, so its utilization is probably impossible. Furthermore, a variety of trojan viruses are able to switch off the embedded antivirus. It is better to make use of the separated program that will not have such exposures.

• 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 TopFreeArticles malware the default option is “Delete”. Press “Apply” to finish the malware removal.

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 web browsers are reset, you need to ensure that your browser will definitely connect the right DNS while connecting to the website you want. Make a text file titled “hosts” on your pc’s desktop, then open it and fill it with the following text³:

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 problem that makes things a lot more difficult to fix, specifically without the anti-malware software. Most of adware variations that are used to show you the TopFreeArticles pop-up advertisements are modifying the deep browser configurations, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to change your browser settings after your system was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will collapse quickly. In certain cases, you will see no crash, however, significant lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 seconds, and afterwards it will be back to the typical, until you attempt to open settings again.

1. More about pop-up advertisements on Wikipedia.
2. Official Microsoft guide for hosts file reset.