Clicking on the Your-Captcha advertisement may trigger the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this guide, you will see the guideline of Your-Captcha popups clearing in several ways, and also inspecting your personal computer for additional viruses presence.

What are Your-Captcha pop-ups?

Your-Captcha popups are a consequence of adware presence. Adware is a sort of malware that presents you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click ads, which generates a large amount of earnings for adware representatives. These promotions may contain sometimes shocking content, or have a web link to malicious content/website, due to the fact that adware maintainers have no reason to inspect the goodness of the material they are going to show – their single target is cash.

Your-Captcha push notification.

Pop-up advertising itself is a good, low-priced and really efficient marketing instrument¹. It permits the vendor to link the customers’ interest to their website, and the buyers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they wish to buy. When the person will receive a pop-up alert that the TV set he desires to buy is available at the online shop he/she checked out previously with a 15% discount, one will surely use this possibility and buy it. Taking into consideration the extremely low price for the popups and their targeting, such a promotion and marketing method is a favourite thing amidst the marketing departments of big online retail stores.

However, such a rewarding strategy could not be missed by malware developers. Option to demonstrate the popup advertisements forcibly to the targets of malware invasion is an ideal basis for evil-minded adjustments with the popup advertisements. And Your-captcha.com promotions is just one of hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Site	Your-captcha.com
Hosting	AS50245 Serverel Inc. Netherlands, Amsterdam
Infection Type	Adware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address	109.206.187.4
Symptoms	Annoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behavior	Hathick, News, Proutings
Fix Tool	GridinSoft Anti-MalwareTo remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Your-Captcha virus?

There are a plenty of ways of becoming contaminated by the adware that result in the Your-Captcha popups tornado. A lion’s part of this computer virus cases is after the free software or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Freeware may additionally be downloaded from the main website, and the adware is provided as a legitimate bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A number of people often work with the dubious programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, different utilities that are free of cost, and even hacked programs. Every one of these types of applications are risky, since it is quite easy to include a Your-Captcha 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.

Your-Captcha popup malware may also be hidden in the ad somewhere on the unusual site. Such web pages are usually packed with intense and blinking ads, and their proprietors usually permit any type of promotions to be posted on their web page. For this reason, clicking on such banners is a risky thing: only the ad provider knows what will occur when you press this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you may likewise get something much more dangerous, like ransomware or coin miner; the large share of coin miners distribution is exactly after the malicious advertisements.

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

Potentially unwanted programs, like Your-Captcha popup virus may initiate a wide range of problems on your personal computer. Distracting is not the only problem – pop-ups may display you the promotions, where you are offered to download another strange application, or “a effective anti-malware tool”. Scareware is usually spread with the use of the last slogun. Potentially undesirable programs, in turn, can have spyware functionality. And it is pretty hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a normal one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and dubious antiviruses, popup-related banners are also exploited as a distribution method by various trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of actions of such malware is 100% unwanted, and can cost you several hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not clicking these ads, they may be clicked by whoever who also uses your PC – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the things can become much more serious, and it will be much harder to deal with it without data and money loss. It is recommended to wipe out the viruses with anti-malware applications as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Your-Captcha pop-up advertisements?

The tutorial of Your-Captcha adware elimination consists of 2 parts. Initially, we need to get rid of the malware, and afterwards fix the consequences of its activity. The removal process is really simple, since it can be done even with making use of Microsoft Defender – security program that is available on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. However, as a result of its significant resources usage, along with some failures that can be serious for some types of users, Defender is often disabled by the users, so its usage is most likely impossible. Moreover, a wide range of trojan viruses are capable to turn off the embedded antivirus. It is far better to use the separated program that will not have such exposures.

I would certainly recommend you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware² – a well-proven security device that will surely exterminate the malware from your PC and also make an impenetrable cover with a Proactive protection feature. However, let’s deal with Your-Captcha adware initially.

Download GridinSoft Anti-Malware

Removing Your-Captcha 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.
• 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.
• When the scan is over, you may choose the action for each detected virus. For all files of Your-Captcha malware the default option is “Delete”. Press “Apply” to finish the malware removal.

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

1. Open “Settings and more” tab in upper right corner, then find here “Settings” button. In the appeared menu, choose “Reset settings” option :
2. After picking the Reset Settings option, you will see the following menu, stating about the settings which will be reverted to original :

1. Open Menu tab (three strips in upper right corner) and click the “Help” button. In the appeared menu choose “troubleshooting information” :
2. In the next screen, find the “Refresh Firefox” option :

After choosing this option, you will see the next message :

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 :

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 browsers are reset, you need to ensure that your browser will definitely connect the correct DNS while connecting to the site you need. Make a text file titled “hosts” on your desktop, then 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 issue that makes things much harder to restore, particularly without the anti-malware software. The majority of adware versions that are used to show you the Your-Captcha pop-up promotions are altering 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. Sometimes, you will see no crash, but significant lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 seconds, and after that it will be back to the typical, until you try 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.

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.

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.

References

1. More about pop-up ads on Wikipedia.
2. GridinSoft Anti-Malware review and the reasons why I advise it for malware removal.
3. Official Microsoft guide for hosts file reset.