Universal-current Ads Removal Guide — How to Fix It?

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Universal-current pop-up alerts can show up unexpectedly, covering the post of the site you visited or opening your browser when you do not wish it to be opened.

Clicking the Universal-current advertisement may lead to the injection of various malware or unwanted programs. In this guide, you will see the guide of Universal-current popups removal in multiple ways, as well as examining your PC for other malware existence.

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

Universal-current popups are an effect of adware action. Adware is a sort of malware that presents you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click promotions, which generates a significant volume of earnings for adware distributors. These ads may include sometimes shocking composition, or have a web link to harmful content/website, due to the fact that adware maintainers have no reason to check the goodness of the web content they are going to reveal – their single target is cash.

Universal-current push notification

Universal-current push notification.

Pop-up marketing itself is an excellent, low-priced and really productive advertising tool1. It makes it possible for the seller to attach the customers’ attention to their website, and the buyers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they wish to buy. When the person will receive a pop-up notification that the TV set he wishes to purchase is offered at the online shop he/she saw previously with a 15% price cut, one will undoubtedly use this opportunity and buy it. Considering the extremely low price for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising and marketing method is a favorite thing among the marketing departments of huge online stores.

Nevertheless, such a profitable system could not be missed by virus developers. Option to show the popup advertisements forcibly to the people of malware invasion is an excellent basis for malicious tricks with the popup promotions. And Universal-current.com promotions is among hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a info for the Universal-current
Site Universal-current.com
Hosting AS35277 LLHOST INC. SRL
Poland, Katowice
Infection Type Adware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address 5.189.255.67
Symptoms Annoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behavior Videomx, Ceukwaterh, Facebookteens
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Universal-current virus?

There are a plenty of ways of getting infected by the adware that trigger the Universal-current popups tornado. A lion’s part of this virus incidents is after the free software or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Freeware may also be downloaded from the official website, and the adware is delivered as a legit bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A huge amount of users regularly work with the dubious programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, a wide range of tools that are free of cost, and even hacked programs. All of these kinds of software are unsafe, because it is very easy to build in a Universal-current 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.

Universal-current popup virus may also be concealed in the promotion somewhere on the odd web page. Such sites are usually full of intense and blinking ads, and their proprietors generally approve any promotions to be published on their page. Hence, clicking such banners is a shot in the dark: only the ad provider knows what will happen when you press this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you may likewise receive something a lot more unsafe, like ransomware or coin miner; the big share of coin miners circulation is exactly after the malicious advertisements.

People dislike popups

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

Potentially undesirable programs, like Universal-current popup virus can provoke a variety of different problems on your personal computer. Distracting is not the only problem – pop-up notifications can show you the banners, where you are offered to download another unknown program, or “a effective security tool”. Scareware is often distributed with the use of the last slogun. Potentially unwanted programs, in turn, may have spyware functionality. 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 fake antiviruses, popup-related promotions are also exploited as a distribution way by various trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such malware is 100% unwanted, and can cost you hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not tapping these promotions, they can be clicked by whoever who also uses your personal computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the situation may become much more serious, and it will be much harder to solve it without data loss. It is recommended to wipe out the viruses with anti-malware programs as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Universal-current pop-up advertisements?

The manual of Universal-current adware clearing consists of 2 sections. Initially, we need to get rid of the malware, and afterwards fix the effects of its action. The removal task is very easy, because it can be performed even with the use of Microsoft Defender – security program that is available on all computers with Windows 8/10. Nonetheless, because of its significant resources utilization, along with some defects that may be crucial for some kinds of users, Defender is frequently disabled by the users, so its use is likely impossible. In addition, various trojan viruses have the ability to shut off the embedded antivirus. It is better to make use of the separated program that will not have such exposures.

I’d suggest you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven anti-malware device that will surely exterminate the viruses from your PC and make an impenetrable cover with a Proactive protection function. But let’s take care of Universal-current adware initially.

Removing Universal-current 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 Universal-current 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 web browser will definitely connect the accurate DNS while connecting to the web page you want. Make a text file titled “hosts” on your pc’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 much harder to restore, particularly without the anti-malware software. Most of adware variants that are used to show you the Universal-current pop-up advertisements are adjusting the deep browser configurations, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to change your browser settings after your computer was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will collapse quickly. Sometimes, you will see no crash, however, huge lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 seconds, and then it will be back to the normal, till you try 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 Universal-current Pop-ups?

Name: Universal-current

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

Leave a Reply

Sending