How to remove Weakeland pop-ups? — Fix Guide

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Weakeland pop-up alerts can appear out of the blue, covering the subject of the page you went to or opening your web browser when you don’t need it to be opened.

Clicking on the Weakeland ad may trigger the injection of various malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the tutorial of Weakeland popups removal in various manners, as well as inspecting your computer for extra malware existence.

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What are Weakeland pop-ups?

Weakeland popups are an effect of adware presence. Adware is a type of malware that presents you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click promotions, which generates a large volume of earnings for adware suppliers. These advertisements may contain explicit information, or have a link to malicious content/website, because adware maintainers have no reason to examine the goodness of the material they are going to show – their single target is money.

Weakeland push notification

Weakeland push notification.

Pop-up promotions itself is an excellent, low-cost and extremely productive marketing tool1. It allows the vendor to attach the customers’ attention to their site, as well as the buyers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they intend to buy. When the consumer will get a pop-up alert that the TV set he likes to buy is provided at the online store he/she visited earlier with a 15% discount, one will undoubtedly use this possibility and buy it. Taking into consideration the extremely small cost for the popups and their targeting, such a promotion and marketing tool is a favourite thing among the marketing departments of huge online sellers.

However, such a successful strategy could not be missed by malware developers. Option to demonstrate the popup ads by force to the targets of malware invasion is an excellent basis for malicious manipulations with the popup advertisements. And Weakeland.com ads is among hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a info for the Weakeland site
SiteWeakeland.com
HostingAS14618 Amazon.com, Inc.
United States, Ashburn
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address44.195.137.121
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorGentssepa, Se22, Se23
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Weakeland virus?

There are a huge amount of methods of becoming infected by the adware that create the Weakeland popups storm. A lion’s part of this malware incidents is after the free software or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Free software may likewise be downloaded from the official site, and the adware is provided as a legit bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A lot of people oftentimes work with the uncertain programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, a wide range of utilities that are free of cost, or even hacked programs. All of these sorts of applications are unsafe, because it is extremely simple to integrate a Weakeland 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.

Weakeland popup virus may additionally be hidden in the ad somewhere on the odd web page. Such web pages are typically loaded with intense and blinking ads, and their owners typically accept any type of promotions to be placed on their web page. Therefore, clicking such banners is a risky thing: 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 far more dangerous, 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 unwanted programs, like Weakeland pop-up virus may initiate a wide range of troubles on your personal computer. Distracting is not the single effect – pop-up notifications may present you the advertisements, where you are offered to download one more unknown program, or “a amazing anti-malware tool”. Scareware is often spread with the use of the last slogun. Potentially undesirable programs, in turn, can have spyware functionality. And it is very 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 chosen as a distribution method by different trojan viruses, for instance – 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 tapping these promotions, they can be clicked by whoever who also uses your personal computer – 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 get rid of the viruses with antivirus programs as soon as possible.

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

The manual of Weakeland adware clearing includes 2 sections. First, we need to get rid of the malware, and afterwards repair the effects of its activity. The removal task is very simple, due to the fact that it can be executed even with using Microsoft Defender – security software that is available on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. However, because of its significant resources usage, as well as some bugs that may be serious for some types of individuals, Defender is frequently turned off by the users, so its usage is probably impossible. What’s more, various trojan viruses are able to disable the embedded antivirus. It is better to make use of the separated program that will not have such exposures.

I would certainly suggest you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven security device that will surely wipe out the viruses from your personal computer and make an impenetrable shield with a Proactive protection function. However, let’s deal with Weakeland adware initially.

Removing Weakeland 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 Weakeland 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 be connected the accurate DNS while connecting to the website you want. Create a text file named “hosts” on your 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.

Nonetheless, there is one problem that makes things a lot harder to fix, specifically without the anti-malware software. Most of adware variants that are utilized to show you the Weakeland pop-up advertisements are altering the deep browser setups, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to change your browser settings after your system was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will collapse soon. In some cases, you will see no crash, however, huge lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 seconds, and then it will be back to the normal, up 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.

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 Weakeland Pop-ups?

Name: Weakeland

Description: Weakeland - 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 Weakeland.com push notifications?” or “why do Weakeland.com pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Weakeland 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 overview and the reasons why I suggest it for malware elimination.
  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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