Wholehugewords Ads Removal Guide — How to Fix It?

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Wholehugewords pop-up alerts may appear unexpectedly, covering the subject of the site you explored or opening your browser when you do not need it to be opened.

Clicking the Wholehugewords ad can lead to the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this guide, you will see the guideline of Wholehugewords popups removal in a couple of ways, as well as examining your personal computer for other malware existence.

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What are Wholehugewords pop-ups?

Wholehugewords popups are a consequence of adware activity. Adware is a type of malware that shows you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which produces a significant volume of income for adware distributors. These promotions might consist of sometimes shocking content, or have a link to malevolent content/website, due to the fact that adware maintainers have no purpose to inspect the goodness of the web content they are going to show – their single target is money.

Wholehugewords push notification

Wholehugewords push notification.

Pop-up advertising itself is a very good, low-cost and also very effective marketing instrument1. It permits the vendor to attach the customers’ attention to their website, as well as the customers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they intend to purchase. When the consumer will receive a pop-up alert that the TV set he wishes to buy is offered at the online shop he/she visited earlier with a 15% discount, one will certainly use this opportunity and get it. Considering the exceptionally low price for the popups and their targeting, such a marketing instrument is a much-loved thing amongst the marketing teams of big internet stores.

However, such a rewarding plan could not be missed by virus creators. Potential to show the popup advertisements forcibly to the people of malware attack is an excellent basis for evil-minded manipulations with the popup advertisements. And Wholehugewords.com advertisements is one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a details for the Wholehugewords site
SiteWholehugewords.com
HostingAS9002 RETN Limited
Netherlands, Amsterdam
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address139.45.197.181
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorNews, Ofslakotha, Xdwhatijunn
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Wholehugewords virus?

There are a huge amount of methods of becoming contaminated by the adware that create the Wholehugewords popups tornado. A lion’s part of this virus cases is after the free software or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Freeware can also be downloaded from the official website, and the adware is offered as a legitimate bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A huge amount of people regularly utilize the uncertain programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, various tools that are free, or perhaps hacked programs. All of these kinds of applications are unsafe, due to the fact that it is quite simple to build in a Wholehugewords malware under the guise of part of the license hacking script, or as a component of the self-made algoritm inside of the Windows optimization tool.

Wholehugewords popup malware can additionally be concealed in the advertisement somewhere on the unusual web page. Such web pages are in most cases packed with intense and blinking ads, and their proprietors usually accept any promotions to be posted on their web page. Hence, clicking such banners is a risky thing: only the advertisement contractor knows what will occur when you press this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you may also get something much more risky, like ransomware or coin miner; the substantial 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 applications, like Wholehugewords popup virus can cause a lot of different problems on your PC. Distracting is not the single problem – pop-up notifications can present you the ads, where you are offered to download one more unknown application, or “a amazing security tool”. Scareware is usually distributed under the last motto. Potentially undesirable programs, in turn, can have spyware functions. And it is very hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a normal one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and dubious antiviruses, popup-related promotions are also chosen as a distribution way by different trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of actions of such malware is 100% unpleasant, and can cost you hundreds or even thousands of dollars. And even if you are not clicking these promotions, they may be clicked by whoever who also makes use of your PC – 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 get rid of the viruses with antivirus applications as soon as possible.

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

The tutorial of Wholehugewords adware elimination contains 2 parts. Initially, we need to remove the malware, and after that deal with the results of its action. The elimination procedure is very simple, since it can be performed even with using Microsoft Defender – anti-virus software that is present on all computers with Windows 8/10. However, due to its huge resources utilization, as well as some problems that may be serious for some types of users, Defender is oftentimes turned off by the users, so its usage is most likely impossible. Moreover, different trojan viruses are able to turn off the embedded antivirus. It is far better to make use of the separated program that will not have such exposures.

I’d recommend you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven anti-malware device that will surely exterminate the viruses from your computer and also create an invulnerable cover with a Proactive protection function. However, let’s manage Wholehugewords adware initially.

Removing Wholehugewords 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 Wholehugewords 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 be connected the correct DNS while connecting to the web page you need. Create a text file named “hosts” on your computer’s desktop, then open it and fill it with the following lines3:

# 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 issue that makes the things much harder to fix, especially without the anti-malware program. The majority of adware variants that are utilized to show you the Wholehugewords pop-up advertisements are altering the deep browser settings, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to change your browser settings after your computer was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will collapse soon. In certain 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 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.

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 Wholehugewords Pop-ups?

Name: Wholehugewords

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