Clicking on the Thehugejournal advertisement can result in the injection of various malware or unwanted programs. In this article, you will see the tutorial of Thehugejournal popups removal in various manners, and also examining your PC for additional viruses presence.

What are Thehugejournal pop-ups?

Thehugejournal popups are a consequence of adware action. Adware is a sort of malware that suggests you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click promotions, which generates a massive volume of revenue for adware distributors. These advertisements might contain sometimes shocking content, or have a link to malevolent content/website, since adware maintainers have no purpose to inspect the goodness of the content they are going to show – their single target is money.

Thehugejournal push notification.

Pop-up advertising itself is a very good, affordable and very efficient marketing tool¹. It permits the seller to link the buyers’ attention to their site, and the customers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they want to buy. When the consumer will receive a pop-up alert that the TV set he desires to purchase is offered at the online store he/she visited earlier with a 15% discount, one will undoubtedly use this chance and purchase it. Considering the extremely small cost for the popups and their targeting, such a promotion and marketing instrument is a favourite thing amongst the marketing teams of big internet retailers.

Nonetheless, such a rewarding 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 evil-minded adjustments with the popup ads. And Thehugejournal.com ads is just one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Site	Thehugejournal.com
Hosting	AS9002 RETN Limited Netherlands, Amsterdam
Infection Type	Adware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address	139.45.197.167
Symptoms	Annoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behavior	Click, Dewhethelesa, News
Fix Tool	GridinSoft Anti-MalwareTo remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Thehugejournal virus?

There are a number of methods of becoming infected by the adware that result in the Thehugejournal popups storm. A lion’s part of this malware incidents is after the free software or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Free software may likewise be downloaded from the official web page, and the adware is supplied as a legit bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A lot of users regularly make use of the dubious programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, a wide range of utilities that are free of cost, or perhaps hacked programs. Every one of these sorts of programs are unsafe, since it is extremely simple to integrate a Thehugejournal malware under the guise of part of the license hacking script, or as a component of the self-made algoritm within the Windows optimization tool.

Thehugejournal popup virus can likewise be concealed in the promotion somewhere on the unusual website. Such web pages are usually filled with bright and blinking ads, and their proprietors typically permit any promos to be published on their web page. Thus, clicking on such banners is a shot in the dark: only the ad provider realizes what will happen when you press this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you may likewise get something far more hazardous, like ransomware or coin miner; the substantial 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 Thehugejournal pop-up virus can cause a lot of different problems on your personal computer. Distracting is not the only problem – pop-up notifications may present you the advertisements, where you are offered to get another strange program, or “a amazing security tool”. Scareware is often distributed with the last slogun. Potentially unwanted programs, in turn, can have spyware functionality. And it is quite hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a legit one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and pseudo antiviruses, popup-related promotions are also used as a distribution method by different trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such malware is 100% unpleasant, and can cost you several hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not interacting with these banners, they may be clicked by whoever who also makes use of your personal computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the situation may become much more serious, and it will be much harder to solve it without information loss. It is recommended to remove the viruses with antivirus applications as soon as possible.

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

The guide of Thehugejournal adware elimination includes 2 parts. First, we need to exterminate the malware, and afterwards repair the consequences of its activity. The elimination task is very simple, because it can be executed even with making use of Microsoft Defender – anti-malware program that is present on all computers with Windows 8/10. Nonetheless, due to its substantial resources utilization, as well as some failures that can be serious for some groups of individuals, Defender is often turned off by the users, so its usage is most likely impossible. Moreover, a wide range of trojan viruses can turn off the embedded antivirus. It is better to make use of the separated program that will not have such vulnerabilities.

I’d recommend you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware² – a well-proven security tool that will undoubtedly exterminate the viruses from your system and also create an invulnerable shield with a Proactive protection function. But let’s manage Thehugejournal adware first.

Download GridinSoft Anti-Malware

Removing Thehugejournal 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 Thehugejournal 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 make sure that your browser will definitely connect the proper DNS while connecting to the web page you want. Create a text file named “hosts” on your desktop, after that 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.

Nevertheless, there is one trouble that makes the things much more difficult to fix, specifically without the anti-malware software. A lot of adware variants that are utilized to show you the Thehugejournal pop-up ads are adjusting the deep browser configurations, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to change your browser settings after your PC was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly collapse soon. In certain cases, you will see no crash, but large lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 seconds, and after that it will be back to the typical, up until 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 also the reasons why I suggest it for malware elimination.
3. Official Microsoft guide for hosts file reset.