Remove Wishenger.com Virus — How to Fix Guide

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Wishenger.com pop-up notifications can show up unexpectedly, covering the content of the site you explored or opening your browser when you do not wish it to be opened.

Clicking on the Wishenger.com advertisement can trigger the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this article, you will see the guide of Wishenger.com popups removal in several methods, as well as inspecting your system for additional malware presence.

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What are Wishenger.com pop-ups?

Quick reference

Wishenger.com popups are an outcome of adware action. Adware is a kind of malware that presents you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which produces a substantial volume of income for adware suppliers. These ads may contain sometimes shocking composition, or have a link to malicious content/website, since adware maintainers have no reason to examine the goodness of the content they are going to reveal – their single target is money.

Wishenger.com push notification

Wishenger.com push notification.

Pop-up marketing itself is an excellent, cheap and also very productive advertising instrument1. It makes it possible for the seller to attach the customers’ interest to their website, as well as the customers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they wish to purchase. When the customer will receive a pop-up notification that the TV set he desires to purchase is provided at the online store he/she visited earlier with a 15% discount, one will certainly use this chance and buy it. Considering the incredibly low cost for the popups and their targeting, such a promotion and marketing instrument is a much-loved thing amongst the advertising departments of huge internet sellers.

Nonetheless, such a successful strategy could not be missed by malware creators. Ability to demonstrate the popup ads forcibly to the people of malware attack is a perfect basis for malicious manipulations with the popup advertisements. And Wishenger.com advertisements is just one of hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a short summary for the Wishenger.com site
Site Wishenger.com
Hosting AS13335 Cloudflare, Inc.
United States, San Francisco
Infection Type Adware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address 104.21.91.252
Symptoms Annoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behavior Pyiera, Newsstroy, Newspro
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Wishenger.com virus?

There are a plenty of ways of becoming contaminated by the adware that create the Wishenger.com 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 site, and the adware is provided as a legit bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A number of users frequently utilize the uncertain programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, a wide range of utilities that are free of cost, or even hacked programs. Every one of these sorts of programs are unsafe, due to the fact that it is extremely simple to integrate a Wishenger.com 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.

Wishenger.com popup virus may additionally be concealed in the promotion somewhere on the unusual website. Such web pages are generally full of bright and blinking advertisements, and their proprietors generally accept any type of promotions to be published on their page. Hence, clicking on such banners is a shot in the dark: only the ad contractor knows what will happen when you click this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you can also get something much more damaging, 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 Wishenger.com popup virus can initiate a variety of problems on your computer. Distracting is not the single problem – pop-ups can display you the advertisements, where you are offered to download another dubious application, or “a effective anti-malware tool”. Scareware is often spread with the use of the last motto. Potentially undesirable programs, in turn, may have spyware functionality. And it is pretty hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a legit one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and fake antiviruses, popup-related advertisements are also chosen as a distribution way by different trojan viruses, for instance – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such viruses is 100% unpleasant, and can cost you hundreds or even thousands of dollars. And even if you are not interacting with these advertisements, they can be clicked by someone who also makes use of your PC – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the things can become much more serious, and it will be much harder to solve 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 Wishenger.com pop-up advertisements?

The guide of Wishenger.com adware elimination contains 2 sections. Initially, we need to deal with the malware, and afterwards deal with the consequences of its action. The removal process is very simple, since it can be done even with using Microsoft Defender – security software that is present on all computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, as a result of its large resources utilization, as well as some bugs that may be crucial for some types of users, Defender is often turned off by the users, so its utilization is likely impossible. Moreover, a wide range of trojan viruses can switch off the embedded antivirus. It is far 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 antivirus device that will certainly exterminate the malware from your computer and also make an invulnerable cover with a Proactive protection feature. However, let’s handle Wishenger.com adware first.

Removing Wishenger.com 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 Wishenger.com 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 connect the accurate DNS while connecting to the site you want. Make a text file named “hosts” on your computer’s desktop, after that open it and fill it with the following content3:

# 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 more difficult to repair, particularly without the anti-malware program. A lot of adware versions that are used to show you the Wishenger.com pop-up ads are changing the deep browser configurations, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to fix your browser settings after your PC was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly collapse quickly. In some cases, you will see no crash, however, huge lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 seconds, and afterwards 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 Wishenger.com Pop-ups?

Name: Wishenger.com

Description: Wishenger.com - 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 Wishenger.com push notifications?” or “why do Wishenger.com pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Wishenger.com 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 ads on Wikipedia.
  2. GridinSoft Anti-Malware review 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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