Remove Wholenicenews Pop-up Virus — How to Remove?

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Wholenicenews pop-up notifications can appear unexpectedly, covering the content of the page you explored or opening your browser when you do not want it to be opened.

Clicking on the Wholenicenews advertisement may result in the injection of different malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the tutorial of Wholenicenews popups clearing in several methods, and also inspecting your system for extra malware presence.

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What are Wholenicenews pop-ups?

Wholenicenews popups are an outcome of adware presence. Adware is a type of malware that suggests you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click promotions, which produces a significant amount of earnings for adware suppliers. These ads may contain sometimes shocking information, or have a link to malevolent content/website, due to the fact that adware maintainers have no reason to check the goodness of the content they are going to reveal – their single target is cash.

Wholenicenews push notification

Wholenicenews push notification.

Pop-up advertising itself is a good, low-priced and also really productive marketing method1. It makes it possible for the vendor to attach the buyers’ attention to their website, as well as the buyers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they want to purchase. When the person will receive a pop-up alert that the TV set he wishes to purchase is offered at the online store he/she checked out earlier with a 15% price cut, one will certainly use this chance and buy it. Considering the extremely small cost for the popups and their targeting, such a promotion and marketing tool is a much-loved thing amongst the marketing departments of large online sellers.

Nonetheless, such a successful system could not be missed by malware creators. Potential to show the popup ads by force to the people of malware invasion is an ideal basis for evil-minded adjustments with the popup ads. And Wholenicenews.com advertisements is one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a short summary for the Wholenicenews site
SiteWholenicenews.com
HostingAS9002 RETN Limited
Netherlands, Amsterdam
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address139.45.197.163
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorHeaculli, Cewukbger, Terhousoopeuk
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Wholenicenews virus?

There are a number of methods of getting infected by the adware that create the Wholenicenews popups storm. A lion’s part of this virus cases is after the free software or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Free software can additionally be downloaded from the official site, and the adware is provided as a legal bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A number of people often make use of the dubious programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, different utilities that are free of cost, and even hacked programs. All of these types of software are risky, because it is extremely easy to include a Wholenicenews 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.

Wholenicenews popup malware may likewise be hidden in the advertisement somewhere on the unusual website. Such sites are typically full of colorful and blinking advertisements, and their owners generally accept any type of promos to be posted on their web page. Thus, clicking on such banners is a shot in the dark: only the ad contractor knows what will happen when you press this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you may likewise receive something a lot more dangerous, like ransomware or coin miner; the substantial share of coin miners distribution 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 Wholenicenews pop-up virus may provoke a lot of different problems on your computer. Distracting is not the single problem – pop-up notifications can display you the banners, where you are offered to get one more strange program, or “a amazing anti-malware tool”. Scareware is often spread under the last motto. Potentially undesirable programs, in turn, may have spyware functions. And it is very hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a legit one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and dubious antiviruses, popup-related banners are also chosen as a spreading way by various trojan viruses, for instance – coin miners. The consequences of actions of such malware is 100% unwanted, and can cost you several hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not tapping these ads, they may be clicked by someone who also uses your personal computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the things can become much more serious, and it will be much harder to solve it without data loss. It is recommended to wipe out the viruses with antivirus applications as soon as possible.

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

The tutorial of Wholenicenews adware elimination consists of 2 parts. First, we need to get rid of the malware, and afterwards correct the consequences of its activity. The removal task is really simple, since it may be done even with the use of Microsoft Defender – anti-virus program that is present on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nonetheless, because of its large resources utilization, along with some failures that may be serious for some categories of users, Defender is frequently disabled by the users, so its utilization is most likely impossible. Moreover, a wide range of trojan viruses can turn off the embedded antivirus. It is far better to make use of the separated program that will not have such weakness.

I’d advise you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven anti-malware tool that will certainly eliminate the viruses from your computer and also make an invulnerable cover with a Proactive protection feature. However, let’s deal with Wholenicenews adware initially.

Removing Wholenicenews 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 Wholenicenews 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 definitely be connected the appropriate DNS while connecting to the web page you want. Create a text file named “hosts” on your computer’s desktop, after that 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.

However, there is one problem that makes the things a lot harder to fix, specifically without the anti-malware software. A lot of adware versions that are used to show you the Wholenicenews pop-up promotions are changing the deep browser configurations, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to fix your browser settings after your system was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly collapse soon. In certain cases, you will see no crash, but 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 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 Wholenicenews Pop-ups?

Name: Wholenicenews

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