YouAreAnIdiot Ads Removal Guide — How to Fix It?

Written by Wilbur Woodham
YouAreAnIdiot pop-up notifications may show up unexpectedly, covering the content of the site you checked or opening your browser when you do not desire it to be opened.

Clicking the YouAreAnIdiot promotion may result in the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the manual of YouAreAnIdiot popups clearing in multiple methods, and also examining your personal computer for additional malware presence.

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What are YouAreAnIdiot pop-ups?

YouAreAnIdiot popups are a result of adware action. Adware is a kind of malware that shows you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click promotions, which creates a large volume of revenue for adware representatives. These promotions might contain explicit content, or have a link to malevolent content/website, because adware maintainers have no reason to inspect the goodness of the material they are going to reveal – their single target is cash.

YouAreAnIdiot push notification

YouAreAnIdiot push notification.

Pop-up advertising itself is a very good, low-priced and also very successful marketing instrument1. It makes it possible for the seller to link the customers’ interest to their website, and the customers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they intend to buy. When the customer will get a pop-up notification that the TV set he wishes to buy is offered at the online shop he/she visited earlier with a 15% price cut, one will surely use this chance and buy it. Considering the very low price for the popups and their targeting, such a promotion and marketing method is a favorite thing among the marketing teams of huge internet sellers.

However, such a successful plan could not be missed by malware developers. Potential to demonstrate the popup advertisements forcibly to the people of malware attack is a perfect basis for evil-minded manipulations with the popup advertisements. And Youareanidiot.cc ads is among hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a details for the YouAreAnIdiot
SiteYouareanidiot.cc
HostingAS13335 Cloudflare, Inc.
United States, San Francisco
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address172.67.183.93
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorContinuesubscript, Shoesda, Pizzada
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the YouAreAnIdiot virus?

There are a lot of methods of getting infected by the adware that lead to the YouAreAnIdiot popups tornado. A lion’s part of this computer virus incidents is after the free software or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Freeware can additionally be downloaded from the official website, and the adware is presented as a legal bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A plenty of individuals oftentimes use the unreliable programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, various tools that are free of cost, and even hacked programs. All of these sorts of software are risky, since it is extremely simple to build in a YouAreAnIdiot 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.

YouAreAnIdiot popup virus may likewise be hidden in the promotion somewhere on the odd web page. Such websites are usually filled with colorful and blinking ads, and their owners generally accept any promos to be posted on their page. Therefore, clicking on such banners is a risky thing: only the ad contractor knows what will occur when you press this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you can additionally get something much more risky, 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 unwanted programs, like YouAreAnIdiot popup virus may cause a variety of different problems on your personal computer. Distracting is not the single problem – pop-ups may show you the advertisements, where you are offered to get one more dubious program, or “a effective security tool”. Scareware is often distributed with the last motto. Potentially unwanted applications, in turn, may have spyware functionality. And it is pretty hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a legit one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and fake antiviruses, popup-related ads are also chosen as a distribution method by various trojan viruses, for instance – coin miners. The consequences of actions of such viruses is 100% unwanted, and can cost you several hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not interacting with these advertisements, they can be clicked by whoever who also uses 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 data and money loss. It is recommended to remove the viruses with anti-malware programs as soon as possible.

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

The manual of YouAreAnIdiot adware elimination contains 2 sections. First, we need to get rid of the malware, and after that take care of the effects of its action. The removal process is really easy, since it can be executed even with using Microsoft Defender – security software that is present on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, because of its significant resources utilization, as well as some problems that can be pivotal for some categories of users, Defender is often disabled by the users, so its usage is most likely impossible. What’s more, different trojan viruses are able to turn off the embedded antivirus. It is better to make use of the separated program that will not have such exposures.

I would certainly recommend you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven antivirus device that will undoubtedly exterminate the malware from your PC and make an invulnerable cover with a Proactive protection feature. However, let’s take care of YouAreAnIdiot adware first.

Removing YouAreAnIdiot 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 YouAreAnIdiot 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 connect the proper DNS while connecting to the website you need. Create a text file titled “hosts” on your pc’s 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.

Nonetheless, there is one trouble that makes things a lot more difficult to restore, especially without the anti-malware program. A lot of adware variations that are used to show you the YouAreAnIdiot pop-up advertisements are altering the deep browser settings, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to change your browser settings after your system was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly collapse soon. Sometimes, you will see no crash, however, significant lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 seconds, and then it will be back to the typical, till you attempt 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 YouAreAnIdiot Pop-ups?

Name: YouAreAnIdiot

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