How to remove Winconcos pop-ups? — Fix Guide

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Winconcos pop-up notices can appear unexpectedly, covering the material of the website you checked or opening your web browser when you do not wish it to be opened.

Clicking the Winconcos ad can cause the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this guide, you will see the tutorial of Winconcos popups removal in various ways, as well as checking your PC for extra viruses existence.

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What are Winconcos pop-ups?

Winconcos popups are an effect of adware action. Adware is a sort of malware that suggests you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click promotions, which generates a major amount of revenue for adware suppliers. These ads might have sometimes shocking content, or have a link to harmful content/website, considering that adware maintainers have no reason to check the goodness of the content they are going to show – their solitary target is cash.

Winconcos push notification

Winconcos push notification.

Pop-up promotions itself is a very good, low-cost and also really efficient advertising method1. It permits the vendor to attach the customers’ interest to their site, and the buyers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they intend to purchase. When the person will get a pop-up alert that the TV set he wishes to purchase is provided at the online store he/she saw previously with a 15% discount, one will definitely use this chance and buy it. Considering the very low price for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising tool is a favourite thing amidst the marketing departments of large internet retailers.

However, such a rewarding strategy could not be missed by malware developers. Potential to demonstrate the popup advertisements by force to the people of malware attack is an ideal basis for malicious adjustments with the popup ads. And Winconcos.com promotions is just one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a short summary for the Winconcos
Site Winconcos.com
Hosting AS13335 Cloudflare, Inc.
United States, San Francisco
Infection Type Adware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address 188.114.97.3
Symptoms Annoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behavior Greatcaptchahere, Vipcapchanow, Ketlex
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Winconcos virus?

There are a lot of methods of getting contaminated by the adware that cause the Winconcos popups tornado. A lion’s part of this virus instances is after the free software or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Freeware may likewise be downloaded from the main web page, and the adware is delivered as a legal bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A number of users regularly utilize the uncertain programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, a wide range of apps that are free, and even hacked programs. All of these kinds of programs are unsafe, since it is quite simple to build in a Winconcos malware under the cover of part of the license hacking script, or as a part of the self-made algoritm within the Windows optimization tool.

Winconcos popup malware may likewise be hidden in the promotion somewhere on the strange website. Such web pages are generally packed with intense and blinking ads, and their owners often permit any promotions to be posted on their page. Thus, clicking on such banners is a shot in the dark: only the ad provider realizes what will occur when you press this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you can likewise get something much more damaging, like ransomware or coin miner; the large share of coin miners distribution is exactly after the malicious promotions.

People dislike popups

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

Potentially unwanted programs, like Winconcos pop-up virus can provoke a variety of different problems on your computer. Distracting is not the single effect – pop-up notifications may display you the ads, where you are offered to get one more dubious program, or “a amazing security tool”. Scareware is usually distributed with the use of the last motto. Potentially undesirable programs, in turn, may have spyware functionality. And it is quite hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a normal one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and pseudo antiviruses, popup-related banners are also chosen as a spreading way by various trojan viruses, for instance – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such viruses is 100% unpleasant, and can cost you several hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not interacting with these ads, they may be clicked by someone who also makes use of your personal computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the things may become much more serious, and it will be much harder to solve it without information loss. It is recommended to wipe out the viruses with antivirus applications as soon as possible.

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

The manual of Winconcos adware clearing contains 2 sections. First, we need to exterminate the malware, and then fix the effects of its activity. The removal procedure is pretty simple, since it can be done even with making use of Microsoft Defender – anti-malware tool that is available on all computers with Windows 8/10. However, as a result of its substantial resources usage, as well as some defects that can be pivotal for some groups of users, Defender is oftentimes disabled by the users, so its utilization is most likely impossible. Moreover, various trojan viruses are able to switch off the embedded antivirus. It is better to make use of the separated program that will not have such weakness.

I would certainly recommend you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven antivirus device that will certainly remove the viruses from your computer and also make an invulnerable cover with a Proactive protection function. However, let’s manage Winconcos adware initially.

Removing Winconcos 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 Winconcos 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 web browsers are reset, you need to make sure that your browser will definitely be connected the proper DNS while connecting to the web page you want. Create a text file titled “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.

However, there is one trouble that makes things much more difficult to fix, particularly without the anti-malware program. Most of adware versions that are used to show you the Winconcos pop-up promotions are modifying the deep browser setups, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to fix your browser settings after your machine was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly collapse quickly. In certain cases, you will see no crash, but significant lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 secs, and afterwards it will be back to the normal, up until you attempt 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.

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 Winconcos Pop-ups?

Name: Winconcos

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