Clicking the News-Potika ad can lead to the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the manual of News-Potika popups removal in various methods, and also examining your system for extra viruses existence.

What are News-Potika pop-ups?

News-Potika popups are an outcome of adware action. Adware is a sort of malware that demonstrates to you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which produces a significant volume of earnings for adware suppliers. These promotions might consist of explicit content, or have a link to malevolent content/website, considering that adware maintainers have no purpose to examine the goodness of the content they are going to show – their solitary target is money.

News-Potika push notification.

Pop-up marketing itself is a very good, affordable and also really successful marketing instrument¹. It makes it possible for the seller to link the buyers’ interest to their site, as well as the customers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they intend to purchase. When the consumer will receive a pop-up alert that the TV set he likes to purchase is offered at the online store he/she visited previously with a 15% discount, one will surely use this chance and get it. Considering the incredibly low price for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising method is a favourite thing amongst the advertising teams of large internet retailers.

However, such a profitable scheme could not be missed by malware creators. Potential to show the popup advertisements forcibly to the victims of malware invasion is a great basis for malicious tricks with the popup promotions. And News-potika.cc ads is just one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Site	News-potika.cc
Hosting	AS63023 GTHost United Kingdom, London
Infection Type	Adware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address	149.7.16.227
Symptoms	Annoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behavior	Towerfriend1, Www, Ligamedia
Fix Tool	GridinSoft Anti-MalwareTo remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the News-Potika virus?

There are a plenty of methods of becoming infected by the adware that result in the News-Potika popups storm. A lion’s part of this virus instances is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Freeware can additionally be downloaded from the main web page, and the adware is provided as a legit bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A huge amount of individuals oftentimes utilize the unreliable programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, a wide range of tools that are free, and even hacked programs. All of these types of applications are risky, because it is very easy to include a News-Potika 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.

News-Potika popup virus may additionally be hidden in the ad somewhere on the unusual website. Such web pages are typically loaded with colorful and blinking advertisements, and their owners typically approve any promos to be placed on their web page. Therefore, clicking such banners is a shot in the dark: only the advertisement provider realizes what will happen when you click this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you may additionally get something much more risky, like ransomware or coin miner; the big share of coin miners distribution is exactly after the malicious ads.

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

Potentially undesirable programs, like News-Potika pop-up virus can initiate a wide range of troubles on your personal computer. Distracting is not the single effect – pop-ups can display you the promotions, where you are offered to get one more strange application, or “a perfect security tool”. Scareware is usually distributed with the use of the last motto. Potentially undesirable applications, in turn, can have spyware functions. And it is pretty hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a legit one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and fake antiviruses, popup-related advertisements are also chosen as a distribution way by different 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 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 solve it without data loss. It is recommended to get rid of the viruses with anti-malware programs as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of News-Potika pop-up advertisements?

The manual of News-Potika adware clearing consists of 2 sections. Initially, we need to remove the malware, and then take care of the consequences of its activity. The elimination procedure is very easy, because it can be done even with the use of Microsoft Defender – anti-malware software that is present on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. However, because of its significant resources utilization, along with some failures that can be critical for some categories of individuals, Defender is oftentimes disabled by the users, so its utilization is likely impossible. Moreover, different trojan viruses can turn off the embedded antivirus. It is much better to make use of the separated program that will not have such weakness.

I’d suggest you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware² – a well-proven antivirus tool that will certainly erase the viruses from your PC and make an invulnerable shield with a Proactive protection function. But let’s manage News-Potika adware initially.

Download GridinSoft Anti-Malware

Removing News-Potika 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 News-Potika 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 be connected the accurate DNS while connecting to the site you want. Create a text file titled “hosts” on your 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.

Nevertheless, there is one problem that makes the things much harder to restore, particularly without the anti-malware software. The majority of adware variants that are used to show you the News-Potika pop-up ads are altering the deep browser setups, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to change your browser settings after your system was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will crash quickly. Sometimes, you will see no crash, however, huge lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 seconds, and then it will be back to the normal, till you try to open settings one more time.

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 suggest it for malware elimination.
3. Official Microsoft guide for hosts file reset.