We get a lot of questions about removing or blocking popups and adware from one source or another, especially pop up ads for all the different Google Biz Kit and Easy Google Profit scams that are out there. Fake news sites and fake blog sites popping up seemingly at random as you are surfing the web are typically a good sign that you have some sort of unwanted adware, malware or spyware on your machine.
How does it work? Some as*hole internet scammer decides that spam is just is not good enough for them and figures out a way to sneakily install software on your computer that causes ads for scam offers to appear over and over and over on your computer. They do this in the hopes that you will be foolish enough to click on one and cough up your credit card information. Do it to 10,000+ people and at least a couple will fall for it.
Most adware invades your computer because of something you explicitly did, rather than some sort of hidden virus that invaded. That free music download software you installed, or that dialog box you clicked on about how you have a virus and CLICK HERE NOW to remove it that installed something called SuperVirusInstaller.exe are the most likely vectors for this sort of computer disease.
At best, they just pop up ads and fake virus scan reports over and over again until you want to throw your computer out the window. At worst, they lurk in the background, copying everything you type into your keyboard to a hidden file that gets uploaded to some black market server somewhere for later mining for username/password combination and credit card numbers.
How do you clear these scam ad popups from your computer? Follow these steps:
- Start Using Firefox as your web browser! Internet Explorer is generally considered to be far more vulnerable to scams and viruses than Firefox. Also, Firefox comes built in with a Popup blocker that will only allow popups from websites you trust. Seriously, using Internet Explorer to surf the internet is like having a one night stand without a condom. Nothing good can come of it, and it might be years before you find out just how bad the consequences were.
- Download, install, and run Ad-Aware from LavaSoft. It’s a program specifically designed to find all the things that traditional anti-virus software misses. It can scan your computer for things like constant ad popups and spyware. And it’s FREE to scan and fix any malware problems it finds. If you want full anti-virus protection and live ongoing malware protection there is a cost for Ad-Aware Plus or Pro, but you can download Ad-Aware Free right now and do a quick scan.
Take the two steps above and take back your computer from all those annoying popup ads! We cannot guarantee that you will not see any popup ads ever again, but the two steps above will greatly reduce the number you run into.
