Clicking the Ourcoolstories ad may cause the injection of various malware or unwanted programs. In this guide, you will see the guide of Ourcoolstories popups clearing in several methods, and also examining your computer for extra malware existence.

What are Ourcoolstories pop-ups?

Ourcoolstories popups are a result of adware activity. Adware is a type of malware that suggests you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click ads, which creates a significant volume of earnings for adware suppliers. These advertisements might have sometimes shocking material, or have a web link to malevolent content/website, due to the fact that adware maintainers have no purpose to check the goodness of the material they are going to reveal – their solitary target is cash.

Ourcoolstories push notification.

Pop-up marketing itself is a good, cheap and extremely successful advertising solution¹. It permits the seller to attach the buyers’ attention to their site, as well as the buyers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they want to buy. When the consumer will get a pop-up notification that the TV set he desires to buy is provided at the online shop he/she checked out earlier with a 15% discount, one will certainly use this possibility and purchase it. Taking into consideration the exceptionally low cost for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising and marketing method is a favourite thing among the advertising departments of big online retailers.

Nevertheless, such a profitable system could not be missed by virus developers. Ability to show the popup ads by force to the people of malware attack is a great basis for malicious tricks with the popup promotions. And Ourcoolstories.com ads is among hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Site	Ourcoolstories.com
Hosting	AS9002 RETN Limited Netherlands, Amsterdam
Infection Type	Adware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address	139.45.197.181
Symptoms	Annoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behavior	Fwukoulnhdluk, News, Sundaytelegraph
Fix Tool	GridinSoft Anti-MalwareTo remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Ourcoolstories virus?

There are a number of ways of getting infected by the adware that lead to the Ourcoolstories popups storm. A lion’s part of this virus cases is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Free software may likewise be downloaded from the main site, and the adware is provided as a legal bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A number of people often use the unreliable programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, various utilities that are free of cost, or perhaps hacked programs. Every one of these kinds of programs are dangerous, due to the fact that it is quite easy to build in a Ourcoolstories malware under the guise of part of the license hacking script, or as a part of the self-made algoritm inside of the Windows optimization tool.

Ourcoolstories popup malware may also be concealed in the ad somewhere on the strange website. Such websites are usually loaded with colorful and blinking advertisements, and their owners usually permit any promos to be placed on their page. For this reason, clicking such banners is a shot in the dark: only the advertisement provider knows what will occur when you press this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you may also get something much more hazardous, like ransomware or coin miner; the large share of coin miners distribution is exactly after the malicious promotions.

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

Potentially undesirable applications, like Ourcoolstories popup virus can initiate a variety of different troubles on your personal computer. Distracting is not the only effect – pop-ups may show you the promotions, where you are offered to get another dubious application, or “a perfect security tool”. Scareware is usually spread with the use of the last slogun. Potentially unwanted applications, in turn, can have spyware functionality. And it is quite hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a legit one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and pseudo antiviruses, popup-related advertisements are also exploited as a spreading method by various trojan viruses, for instance – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such malware is 100% unwanted, and can cost you hundreds or even thousands of dollars. And even if you are not clicking these banners, they can be clicked by whoever who also makes use of your computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the situation can become much more serious, and it will be much harder to solve it without information loss. It is recommended to wipe out the viruses with antivirus programs as soon as possible.

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

The manual of Ourcoolstories adware clearing includes 2 parts. Initially, we need to get rid of the malware, and afterwards deal with the effects of its action. The elimination procedure is really simple, since it can be done even with the use of Microsoft Defender – anti-virus software that is present on all computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, as a result of its huge resources consumption, as well as some failures that may be pivotal for some groups of users, Defender is oftentimes disabled by the users, so its utilization is likely impossible. What’s more, a variety of trojan viruses are able to turn off the embedded antivirus. It is much 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 certainly eliminate the malware from your personal computer and create an impenetrable cover with a Proactive protection feature. But let’s manage Ourcoolstories adware initially.

Download GridinSoft Anti-Malware

Removing Ourcoolstories 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 Ourcoolstories 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 web browsers are reset, you need to ensure that your browser will be connected the correct DNS while connecting to the site you want. Create a text file titled “hosts” on your computer’s 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.

However, there is one issue that makes the things a lot harder to restore, especially without the anti-malware program. Most of adware variants that are used to show you the Ourcoolstories pop-up promotions are changing the deep browser setups, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to fix your browser settings after your machine was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will collapse soon. In some cases, you will see no crash, however, large lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 secs, and afterwards it will be back to the typical, up until 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.

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 overview and also the reasons why I recommend it for malware removal.
3. Official Microsoft guide for hosts file reset.