Remove Traffic-links Pop-up Ads — How to Fix Gude

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Traffic-links pop-up notices can show up unexpectedly, covering the subject of the website you explored or opening your web browser when you don’t need it to be opened.

Clicking on the Traffic-links advertisement can result in the injection of different malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the guideline of Traffic-links popups clearing in several ways, and also inspecting your system for additional malware existence.

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What are Traffic-links pop-ups?

Traffic-links popups are an outcome of adware action. Adware is a kind of malware that shows you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click promotions, which generates a substantial volume of income for adware representatives. These promotions may include explicit composition, or have a link to malicious content/website, considering that adware maintainers have no purpose to check the goodness of the web content they are going to reveal – their single target is money.

Traffic-links push notification

Traffic-links push notification.

Pop-up marketing itself is an excellent, cheap and very productive marketing method1. It allows the vendor to link the customers’ interest to their website, as well as the customers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they wish to purchase. When the customer will get a pop-up alert that the TV set he likes to buy is offered at the online shop he/she checked out earlier with a 15% discount, one will definitely use this opportunity and get it. Considering the very small cost for the popups and their targeting, such a marketing method is a favourite thing among the advertising departments of big online retail stores.

Nevertheless, such a profitable system could not be missed by virus developers. Option to show the popup advertisements by force to the people of malware attack is an ideal basis for malevolent tricks with the popup ads. And Traffic-links.com advertisements is just one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a short info for the Traffic-links
SiteTraffic-links.com
HostingAS202053 UpCloud Ltd
Germany, Frankfurt am Main
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address94.237.103.119
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorYourhypejournal, Pro, One
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Traffic-links virus?

There are a plenty of methods of becoming infected by the adware that cause the Traffic-links popups tornado. A lion’s part of this virus incidents is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Free software can also be downloaded from the official web page, and the adware is presented as a legit bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A lot of users often make use of the dubious programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, various apps that are free of cost, or perhaps hacked programs. All of these kinds of applications are unsafe, because it is quite simple to integrate a Traffic-links 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.

Traffic-links popup virus can additionally be hidden in the ad somewhere on the odd web page. Such websites are in most cases full of intense and blinking ads, and their owners often permit any type of promos to be placed on their page. Therefore, clicking such banners is a risky thing: only the advertisement contractor realizes what will happen when you click this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you may likewise receive something much more dangerous, like ransomware or coin miner; the big 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 applications, like Traffic-links pop-up virus may initiate a wide range of troubles on your personal computer. Distracting is not the only problem – pop-up notifications can show you the advertisements, where you are offered to download another strange program, or “a amazing anti-malware tool”. Scareware is usually distributed with the use of the last slogun. Potentially undesirable applications, in turn, may have spyware functions. And it is pretty hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a good one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and dubious antiviruses, popup-related banners are also exploited as a spreading way by different trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of actions of such viruses is 100% unwanted, and can cost you several hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not interacting with these promotions, they can be clicked by whoever who also makes use of your personal computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the things can become much more serious, and it will be much harder to deal with it without information loss. It is recommended to wipe out the viruses with antivirus programs as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Traffic-links pop-up advertisements?

The tutorial of Traffic-links adware clearing consists of 2 sections. First, we need to get rid of the malware, and then take care of the effects of its activity. The removal procedure is pretty simple, since it may be performed even with the use of Microsoft Defender – anti-virus program that is present on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nonetheless, as a result of its significant resources utilization, along with some errors that can be serious for some types of individuals, Defender is often turned off by the users, so its usage is likely impossible. Furthermore, a wide range of trojan viruses have the ability to switch off the embedded antivirus. It is better to use the separated program that will not have such vulnerabilities.

I would certainly recommend you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven anti-malware tool that will certainly eliminate the malware from your personal computer and also create an invulnerable cover with a Proactive protection feature. However, let’s take care of Traffic-links adware first.

Removing Traffic-links 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 Traffic-links 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 ensure that your browser will connect the correct DNS while connecting to the web page you need. Create a text file titled “hosts” on your desktop, then 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.

Nevertheless, there is one issue that makes things a lot harder to restore, particularly without the anti-malware program. The majority of adware variants that are used to show you the Traffic-links pop-up advertisements are changing the deep browser settings, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to fix your browser settings after your computer was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will collapse soon. In some cases, you will see no crash, but significant lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 seconds, and then it will be back to the typical, till 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 Traffic-links Pop-ups?

Name: Traffic-links

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