Totalwownews Ads Removal Guide — How to Fix It?

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Totalwownews pop-up notices can appear out of the blue, covering the content of the page you visited or opening your web browser when you don’t wish it to be opened.

Clicking on the Totalwownews promotion can trigger the injection of various malware or unwanted programs. In this guide, you will see the guide of Totalwownews popups clearing in several methods, and also inspecting your system for additional malware presence.

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What are Totalwownews pop-ups?

Totalwownews popups are a consequence of adware activity. Adware is a sort of malware that suggests you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which generates a substantial volume of profit for adware suppliers. These promotions may have sometimes shocking content, or have a web link to malevolent content/website, because adware maintainers have no reason to examine the goodness of the web content they are going to show – their single target is money.

Totalwownews push notification

Totalwownews push notification.

Pop-up promotions itself is an excellent, low-priced and extremely successful marketing solution1. It allows the vendor to attach the customers’ interest to their website, and the buyers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they want to buy. When the consumer will receive a pop-up notification that the TV set he desires to buy is offered at the online store he/she saw earlier with a 15% price cut, one will undoubtedly use this possibility and purchase it. Taking into consideration the incredibly low price for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising method is a much-loved thing amidst the marketing teams of large online stores.

However, such a rewarding plan could not be missed by virus creators. Option to demonstrate the popup ads forcibly to the targets of malware invasion is a great basis for evil-minded manipulations with the popup promotions. And Totalwownews.com promotions is one of hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a short summary for the Totalwownews
SiteTotalwownews.com
HostingAS9002 RETN Limited
Netherlands, Amsterdam
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address139.45.197.151
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorLowtyruntor, Wp20, News
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Totalwownews virus?

There are a plenty of ways of getting contaminated by the adware that trigger the Totalwownews popups tornado. A lion’s part of this malware instances is after the free software or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Free software can likewise be downloaded from the main web page, and the adware is supplied as a legit bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A lot of people oftentimes use the unreliable programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, different utilities that are free, or even hacked programs. All of these types of software are unsafe, because it is quite easy to integrate a Totalwownews malware under the cover of part of the license hacking script, or as a part of the self-made algoritm within the Windows optimization tool.

Totalwownews popup virus may additionally be hidden in the advertisement somewhere on the strange website. Such websites are typically packed with bright and blinking advertisements, and their owners generally approve any promos to be placed on their web page. Thus, clicking such banners is a shot in the dark: only the advertisement provider realizes what will occur when you click this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you can additionally receive something much more unsafe, like ransomware or coin miner; the substantial 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 unwanted programs, like Totalwownews popup virus may initiate a variety of different problems on your PC. Distracting is not the only effect – pop-ups may present you the advertisements, where you are offered to get one more unknown application, or “a amazing security tool”. Scareware is usually distributed with the last slogun. Potentially unwanted programs, in turn, may have spyware functions. And it is very hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a good one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and pseudo antiviruses, popup-related promotions are also chosen as a distribution way by different trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such malware is 100% unwanted, and can cost you hundreds or even thousands of dollars. And even if you are not clicking these banners, 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 solve it without data loss. It is recommended to get rid of the viruses with antivirus applications as soon as possible.

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

The manual of Totalwownews adware removal consists of 2 parts. First, we need to remove the malware, and afterwards repair the results of its activity. The elimination task is very simple, due to the fact that it can be executed even with the use of Microsoft Defender – anti-virus program that is present on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, because of its huge resources usage, as well as some defects that may be serious for some groups of individuals, Defender is oftentimes turned off by the users, so its usage is most likely impossible. In addition, a wide range of trojan viruses can switch off the embedded antivirus. It is much better to make use of the separated program that will not have such vulnerabilities.

I’d advise you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven antivirus tool that will undoubtedly remove the malware from your personal computer and create an invulnerable cover with a Proactive protection function. However, let’s manage Totalwownews adware first.

Removing Totalwownews 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 Totalwownews 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 definitely connect the proper DNS while connecting to the web page you want. Make a text file named “hosts” on your computer’s desktop, then 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.

However, there is one issue that makes things much more difficult to repair, particularly without the anti-malware program. Most of adware variants that are used to show you the Totalwownews pop-up advertisements are changing the deep browser settings, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to change your browser settings after your PC was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will crash soon. Sometimes, you will see no crash, but significant lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 secs, and after that it will be back to the typical, until you try to open settings 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 Totalwownews Pop-ups?

Name: Totalwownews

Description: Totalwownews - 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 Totalwownews.com push notifications?” or “why do Totalwownews.com pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Totalwownews 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 ads on Wikipedia.
  2. GridinSoft Anti-Malware overview and the reasons why I suggest 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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