Video-started.digital Ads Removal Guide — How to Fix It?

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Video-started.digital pop-up notices can show up out of the blue, covering the material of the site you went to or opening your browser when you don’t want it to be opened.

Clicking on the Video-started.digital advertisement can trigger the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the guideline of Video-started.digital popups clearing in multiple ways, as well as examining your PC for other malware existence.

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What are Video-started.digital pop-ups?

Quick reference

For those wanting to learn more about popups and their marketing, the current version of this blog post is the result of an examination of some of their recent activities. While I’m quite impressed with the potential of the tool as a means to get people engaged with popups more directly, let me offer some background.

Popups.com and Facebook Ads

Popups.com is an early start-ups company that began in 2004 with the simple desire to create a more engaging website. Their initial product was simple, and as it turned out, it was incredibly successful. On social media this became especially apparent when those people in their group shared a picture of their favorite pop-up, as well as more recent pop-up trends that would pop up on a trending topic.

Video-started.digital popups are an effect of adware presence. Adware is a kind of malware that shows you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click ads, which creates a massive amount of income for adware distributors. These promotions might have sometimes shocking information, or have a web link to harmful 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.

Video-started.digital push notification

Video-started.digital push notification.

Pop-up promotions itself is a good, affordable and really effective marketing method1. It makes it possible for the seller to link the buyers’ attention to their site, as well as the buyers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they intend to buy. When the customer will get a pop-up notification that the TV set he likes to buy is offered at the online store he/she visited previously with a 15% price cut, one will definitely use this chance and get it. Taking into consideration the extremely low cost for the popups and their targeting, such a marketing tool is a favourite thing amongst the advertising teams of huge online retail stores.

Nonetheless, such a rewarding system could not be missed by virus creators. Option to show the popup ads by force to the targets of malware attack is a great basis for malicious tricks with the popup advertisements. And Video-started.digital ads is one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a details for the Video-started.digital
Site Video-started.digital
Hosting AS60781 LeaseWeb Netherlands B.V.
Netherlands, Schaijk
Infection Type Adware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address 213.227.149.216
Symptoms Annoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behavior Load04, Rnothearing, 1stkissmanga
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Video-started.digital virus?

There are a plenty of ways of becoming contaminated by the adware that result in the Video-started.digital popups storm. A lion’s part of this virus instances is after the free software or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Free software can also be downloaded from the official web page, and the adware is provided as a legitimate bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A plenty of individuals often 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 sorts of applications are unsafe, since it is quite simple to build in a Video-started.digital malware under the cover of part of the license hacking script, or as a component of the self-made algoritm within the Windows optimization tool.

Video-started.digital popup virus can additionally be concealed in the ad somewhere on the odd site. Such websites are generally loaded with bright and blinking advertisements, and their owners generally approve any promotions to be placed on their page. Hence, clicking such banners is a shot in the dark: only the advertisement contractor knows what will happen when you click this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you may additionally receive something far more threatening, like ransomware or coin miner; the large share of coin miners distribution is exactly after the malicious promotions.

People dislike popups

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

Potentially undesirable applications, like Video-started.digital pop-up virus may provoke a variety of different problems on your computer. Distracting is not the single problem – pop-ups may display you the promotions, where you are offered to download another dubious application, or “a perfect security tool”. Scareware is often distributed with the use of the last motto. Potentially undesirable applications, in turn, may have spyware functionality. And it is quite hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a legit one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and fake antiviruses, popup-related ads are also exploited as a spreading way by different trojan viruses, for instance – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such viruses is 100% unwanted, and can cost you hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not clicking these banners, they may be clicked by whoever who also uses your PC – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the situation can become much more serious, and it will be much harder to deal with it without information loss. It is recommended to eliminate the viruses with anti-malware programs as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Video-started.digital pop-up advertisements?

The tutorial of Video-started.digital adware clearing contains 2 parts. Initially, we need to remove the malware, and afterwards fix the consequences of its action. The removal task is really easy, because it may be done even with making use of Microsoft Defender – anti-malware program that is present on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, due to its significant resources utilization, along with some errors that may be serious for some kinds of individuals, Defender is oftentimes turned off by the users, so its usage is most likely impossible. Moreover, a variety of trojan viruses are capable to switch off the embedded antivirus. It is much 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 antivirus tool that will definitely exterminate the malware from your computer and make an invulnerable shield with a Proactive protection feature. However, let’s take care of Video-started.digital adware first.

Removing Video-started.digital 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 Video-started.digital 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 definitely connect the correct 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 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.

Nonetheless, there is one problem that makes the things a lot more difficult to repair, specifically without the anti-malware program. Most of adware versions that are utilized to show you the Video-started.digital pop-up advertisements are changing the deep browser settings, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to fix your browser settings after your computer was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly 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 Video-started.digital Pop-ups?

Name: Video-started.digital

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

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