Remove WorldTimes Virus — How to Fix Guide

Written by Wilbur Woodham
WorldTimes pop-up notices can appear out of the blue, covering the content of the site you visited or opening your web browser when you don’t want it to be opened.

Clicking on the WorldTimes promotion may result in the injection of various malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the manual of WorldTimes popups removal in multiple manners, as well as checking your computer for other viruses presence.

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What are WorldTimes pop-ups?

WorldTimes popups are a result of adware action. Adware is a sort of malware that suggests you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which creates a massive amount of profit for adware distributors. These advertisements may have explicit material, or have a web link to malicious content/website, considering that adware maintainers have no purpose to inspect the goodness of the web content they are going to show – their single target is cash.

WorldTimes push notification

WorldTimes push notification.

Pop-up advertising itself is a very good, affordable and extremely successful advertising instrument1. It makes it possible for the seller to link the customers’ attention to their site, and the buyers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they wish to purchase. When the consumer will get a pop-up notification that the TV set he desires to purchase is provided at the online store he/she checked out previously with a 15% price cut, one will surely use this opportunity and get it. Considering the incredibly low cost for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising and marketing tool is a much-loved thing amidst the marketing teams of big online retailers.

Nonetheless, such a successful system could not be missed by malware developers. Potential to show the popup advertisements by force to the targets of malware attack is a perfect basis for malicious manipulations with the popup ads. And Worldtimes.xyz promotions is among hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a info for the WorldTimes
SiteWorldtimes.xyz
HostingAS15317 Serverel Inc.
United States, San Jose
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address173.214.240.15
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorCheck, Websecurerr, Thechronicles
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the WorldTimes virus?

There are a plenty of ways of becoming infected by the adware that trigger the WorldTimes popups tornado. 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 also be downloaded from the official web page, and the adware is offered as a legal bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A lot of people often utilize the dubious programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, different utilities that are free, or perhaps hacked programs. All of these kinds of software are dangerous, due to the fact that it is quite easy to build in a WorldTimes malware under the guise of part of the license hacking script, or as a part of the self-made algoritm within the Windows optimization tool.

WorldTimes popup malware may likewise be concealed in the ad somewhere on the unusual web page. Such web pages are usually full of colorful and blinking ads, and their owners often permit any promotions to be posted on their web page. Hence, clicking on such banners is a risky thing: only the advertisement contractor realizes what will happen when you click this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you may likewise get something much more unsafe, like ransomware or coin miner; the large share of coin miners circulation is exactly after the malicious promotions.

People dislike popups

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

Potentially undesirable programs, like WorldTimes popup virus may initiate a variety of different troubles on your PC. Distracting is not the single effect – pop-up notifications may display you the advertisements, where you are offered to download another dubious application, or “a perfect anti-malware tool”. Scareware is usually spread with the use of the last slogun. Potentially unwanted applications, in turn, can have spyware functions. And it is quite hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a normal one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and fake antiviruses, popup-related banners are also chosen as a distribution method by different trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such malware is 100% unwanted, and can cost you hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not interacting with these promotions, they may be clicked by someone who also uses your PC – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the things may 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 anti-malware applications as soon as possible.

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

The tutorial of WorldTimes adware clearing contains 2 parts. First, we need to remove the malware, and after that correct the results of its activity. The elimination procedure is pretty simple, since it may be done even with the use of Microsoft Defender – security program that is available on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nonetheless, due to its significant resources utilization, as well as some failures that may be crucial for some groups of individuals, Defender is frequently turned off by the users, so its usage is probably impossible. Furthermore, a wide range of trojan viruses have the ability to turn off the embedded antivirus. It is much better to make use of the separated program that will not have such weakness.

I’d recommend you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven anti-malware tool that will certainly remove the malware from your computer and also make an impenetrable cover with a Proactive protection feature. However, let’s manage WorldTimes adware first.

Removing WorldTimes 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 WorldTimes 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 ensure that your browser will be connected the right DNS while connecting to the site you want. Create a text file named “hosts” on your pc’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.

Nonetheless, there is one problem that makes the things a lot harder to fix, particularly without the anti-malware program. Most of adware variations that are utilized to show you the WorldTimes pop-up ads are modifying the deep browser configurations, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to fix your browser settings after your machine was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly collapse soon. In some cases, you will see no crash, however, significant lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 seconds, and after that it will be back to the typical, up until you try to open settings once more.

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 WorldTimes Pop-ups?

Name: WorldTimes

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