Remove Watchadsfree Pop-up Ads — How to Fix Gude

Watchadsfree pop-up alerts can show up out of the blue, covering the content of the site you checked or opening your browser when you do not wish it to be opened.

Clicking the Watchadsfree advertisement may cause the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this guide, you will see the manual of Watchadsfree popups clearing in several methods, and also inspecting your system for extra viruses presence.

It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!

Removing Watchadsfree 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.

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What are Watchadsfree pop-ups?

Watchadsfree popups are a consequence of adware presence. Adware is a kind of malware that shows you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which generates a large amount of revenue for adware suppliers. These promotions might consist of sometimes shocking composition, or have a web link to harmful content/website, because adware maintainers have no reason to inspect the goodness of the web content they are going to show – their single target is money.

Watchadsfree push notification.

Pop-up promotions itself is a very good, cheap and really efficient marketing tool¹. It permits the vendor to attach the customers’ attention to their site, as well as the customers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they intend to purchase. When the consumer will get a pop-up alert that the TV set he wishes to purchase is provided at the online shop he/she checked out previously with a 15% discount, one will definitely use this possibility and get it. Considering the very low cost for the popups and their targeting, such a promotion and marketing instrument is a favourite thing amongst the advertising departments of big online sellers.

However, such a successful scheme could not be missed by virus creators. Option to demonstrate the popup ads by force to the people of malware attack is a perfect basis for malevolent adjustments with the popup promotions. And Watchadsfree.com promotions is among hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a short summary for the Watchadsfree

How have I got the Watchadsfree virus?

There are a huge amount of ways of getting infected by the adware that trigger the Watchadsfree popups tornado. A lion’s part of this computer virus incidents is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Freeware can additionally be downloaded from the official site, and the adware is delivered as a legitimate bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A number of people frequently work with the uncertain programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, a wide range of tools that are free of cost, and even hacked programs. Every one of these sorts of programs are risky, since it is quite simple to integrate a Watchadsfree 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.

Watchadsfree popup malware may additionally be hidden in the promotion somewhere on the unusual website. Such websites are generally loaded with colorful and blinking advertisements, and their owners typically permit any promotions to be posted on their page. Hence, clicking on such banners is a risky thing: only the advertisement contractor knows what will happen when you click this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you may additionally receive something much more damaging, like ransomware or coin miner; the substantial share of coin miners distribution is exactly after the malicious promotions.

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

Potentially unwanted applications, like Watchadsfree popup virus may initiate a lot of different troubles on your computer. Distracting is not the single effect – pop-ups can show you the promotions, where you are offered to get another unknown program, or “a perfect security tool”. Scareware is often distributed under the last motto. Potentially undesirable applications, in turn, may have spyware functions. And it is very hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a legit one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and pseudo antiviruses, popup-related advertisements are also exploited as a distribution method by different trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such malware is 100% unpleasant, and can cost you several hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not clicking these promotions, they may be clicked by whoever who also uses your personal computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the things may become much more serious, and it will be much harder to deal with it without data loss. It is recommended to eliminate the viruses with antivirus applications as soon as possible.

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

The tutorial of Watchadsfree adware clearing contains 2 sections. Initially, we need to deal with the malware, and after that deal with the effects of its action. The elimination task is quite easy, since it may be done even with using Microsoft Defender – security tool that is available on all computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, as a result of its significant resources consumption, as well as some defects that can be crucial for some kinds of individuals, Defender is frequently disabled by the users, so its utilization is probably impossible. Additionally, different trojan viruses are capable to turn off the embedded antivirus. It is better to make use of the separated program that will not have such weakness.

I would certainly suggest you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware² – a well-proven security device that will certainly exterminate the malware from your computer and also create an impenetrable cover with a Proactive protection feature. However, let’s handle Watchadsfree adware first.

Removing Watchadsfree 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.

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

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. 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 browsers are reset, you need to make sure that your browser will connect the appropriate DNS while connecting to the website you want. Create a text file titled “hosts” on your pc’s desktop, after that open it and fill it with the following content³:

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 trouble that makes the things a lot harder to repair, especially without the anti-malware software. The majority of adware variations that are utilized to show you the Watchadsfree pop-up promotions are changing the deep browser setups, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to fix your browser settings after your PC was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly collapse soon. In some cases, you will see no crash, but large lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 seconds, and then it will be back to the typical, until you try to open settings one more time.

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.

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.

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 Watchadsfree Pop-ups?

Name: Watchadsfree

Description: Watchadsfree - 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 Watchadsfree.com push notifications?” or “why do Watchadsfree.com pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Watchadsfree 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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1. More about pop-up advertisements on Wikipedia.
2. GridinSoft Anti-Malware review and also the reasons why I recommend it for malware elimination.
3. Official Microsoft guide for hosts file reset.