Whackyprizes Ads Removal Guide — How to Fix It?

Whackyprizes pop-up notifications may show up unexpectedly, covering the subject of the page you visited or opening your browser when you do not desire it to be opened.

Clicking the Whackyprizes promotion can lead to the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the guideline of Whackyprizes popups clearing in a couple of methods, and also inspecting your personal computer for extra malware existence.

It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!

Removing Whackyprizes 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 Whackyprizes pop-ups?

Whackyprizes popups are a consequence of adware presence. Adware is a sort of malware that shows you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click ads, which produces a significant volume of income for adware representatives. These advertisements may have explicit composition, or have a web link to malicious content/website, due to the fact that adware maintainers have no purpose to examine the goodness of the content they are going to show – their single target is money.

Whackyprizes push notification.

Pop-up marketing itself is an excellent, affordable and also extremely efficient advertising instrument¹. It permits the vendor to link the customers’ interest to their site, and the buyers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they wish to purchase. When the customer will receive a pop-up alert that the TV set he wishes to purchase is provided at the online shop he/she saw previously with a 15% discount, one will surely use this opportunity and purchase it. Considering the very low price for the popups and their targeting, such a promotion and marketing tool is a favourite thing among the advertising departments of big internet retail stores.

Nevertheless, such a successful scheme could not be missed by malware developers. Potential to demonstrate the popup advertisements forcibly to the people of malware attack is a perfect basis for malevolent manipulations with the popup promotions. And Whackyprizes.com promotions is among hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a details for the Whackyprizes

How have I got the Whackyprizes virus?

There are a number of methods of becoming infected by the adware that result in the Whackyprizes popups storm. A lion’s part of this computer virus incidents is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Free software can additionally be downloaded from the official web page, and the adware is offered as a legitimate bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A number of individuals oftentimes use the unreliable programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, different tools that are free, and even hacked programs. Every one of these types of programs are risky, since it is quite easy to build in a Whackyprizes malware under the guise of part of the license hacking script, or as a part of the self-made algoritm inside of the Windows optimization tool.

Whackyprizes popup malware may additionally be concealed in the promotion somewhere on the odd site. Such websites are typically full of intense and blinking ads, and their proprietors often permit any kind of promotions to be posted on their web 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 far more risky, like ransomware or coin miner; the big share of coin miners distribution is exactly after the malicious ads.

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

Potentially undesirable applications, like Whackyprizes popup virus may provoke a variety of troubles on your personal computer. Distracting is not the single effect – pop-up notifications can show you the ads, where you are offered to get one more unknown application, or “a amazing security tool”. Scareware is usually distributed with the use of the last slogun. Potentially unwanted programs, in turn, can have spyware functionality. And it is quite hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a good one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and fake antiviruses, popup-related ads are also used as a spreading way by various trojan viruses, for instance – coin miners. The consequences of actions of such viruses is 100% unpleasant, and can cost you hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not interacting with these banners, they may be clicked by someone who also makes use of your personal computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the situation may become much more serious, and it will be much harder to deal with it without information loss. It is recommended to remove the viruses with anti-malware programs as soon as possible.

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

The tutorial of Whackyprizes adware clearing contains 2 sections. Initially, we need to remove the malware, and after that deal with the consequences of its action. The removal task is really simple, since it may be performed even with making use of Microsoft Defender – anti-malware tool that is present on all computers with Windows 8/10. However, as a result of its significant resources usage, as well as some errors that may be serious for some types of users, Defender is frequently disabled by the users, so its usage is likely impossible. In addition, various trojan viruses are able to disable the embedded antivirus. It is better to use the separated program that will not have such vulnerabilities.

I’d advise you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware² – a well-proven anti-malware device that will definitely erase the viruses from your personal computer and also make an invulnerable shield with a Proactive protection feature. However, let’s take care of Whackyprizes adware first.

Removing Whackyprizes 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 Whackyprizes 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 web browser will be connected the proper DNS while connecting to the site you want. Create a text file titled “hosts” on your computer’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 issue that makes things much harder to fix, specifically without the anti-malware software. Most of adware variations that are utilized to show you the Whackyprizes pop-up advertisements are altering the deep browser configurations, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to fix your browser settings after your system was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will collapse quickly. In some cases, you will see no crash, however, large lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 seconds, and then it will be back to the normal, until you try to open settings once 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.

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 Whackyprizes Pop-ups?

Name: Whackyprizes

Description: Whackyprizes - 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 Whackyprizes.com push notifications?” or “why do Whackyprizes.com pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Whackyprizes 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 overview and also the reasons why I advise it for malware removal.
3. Official Microsoft guide for hosts file reset.