Clicking on the Whackyblue advertisement can trigger the injection of different malware or unwanted programs. In this guide, you will see the guideline of Whackyblue popups removal in various manners, as well as examining your PC for other malware presence.

What are Whackyblue pop-ups?

Whackyblue popups are a consequence of adware activity. Adware is a type of malware that shows you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click ads, which generates a major volume of profit for adware suppliers. These advertisements might have sometimes shocking composition, or have a link to malicious content/website, considering that adware maintainers have no purpose to check the goodness of the web content they are going to reveal – their solitary target is cash.

Whackyblue push notification.

Pop-up marketing itself is an excellent, low-priced and very successful marketing tool¹. It enables the vendor to attach the buyers’ interest to their site, and the customers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they intend to purchase. When the customer will get a pop-up notification that the TV set he desires to buy is provided at the online store he/she visited earlier with a 15% price cut, one will undoubtedly use this chance and purchase it. Considering the extremely low cost for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising tool is a favorite thing among the marketing departments of large internet retailers.

However, such a successful strategy could not be missed by malware creators. Ability to demonstrate the popup advertisements by force to the people of malware attack is a perfect basis for evil-minded manipulations with the popup advertisements. And Whackyblue.com ads is just one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Site	Whackyblue.com
Hosting	AS202053 UpCloud Ltd Germany, Frankfurt am Main
Infection Type	Adware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address	94.237.93.242
Symptoms	Annoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behavior	News, News, Topeasyvisits
Fix Tool	GridinSoft Anti-MalwareTo remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Whackyblue virus?

There are a number of methods of becoming contaminated by the adware that result in the Whackyblue popups storm. A lion’s part of this computer virus instances is after the free software or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Freeware may also be downloaded from the official site, and the adware is offered as a legitimate bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A plenty of users regularly utilize the unreliable programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, a wide range of tools that are free, and even hacked programs. All of these types of software are unsafe, because it is quite easy to include a Whackyblue malware under the guise of part of the license hacking script, or as a component of the self-made algoritm inside of the Windows optimization tool.

Whackyblue popup malware can likewise be hidden in the promotion somewhere on the unusual site. Such web pages are in most cases full of intense and blinking advertisements, and their proprietors typically approve any kind of promotions to be posted on their page. For this reason, clicking on such banners is a shot in the dark: only the ad contractor realizes what will occur when you press this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you can additionally get something a lot more unsafe, like ransomware or coin miner; the large share of coin miners circulation is exactly after the malicious promotions.

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

Potentially unwanted applications, like Whackyblue pop-up virus can initiate a variety of different problems on your PC. Distracting is not the only effect – pop-up notifications may display you the banners, where you are offered to get another unknown program, or “a perfect security tool”. Scareware is often distributed with the use of the last slogun. Potentially undesirable programs, in turn, may 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 pseudo antiviruses, popup-related banners are also used as a spreading way by various trojan viruses, for instance – coin miners. The consequences of actions of such viruses is 100% unwanted, and can cost you hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not interacting with these advertisements, they can be clicked by someone who also uses your computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the situation 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 antivirus programs as soon as possible.

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

The guide of Whackyblue adware removal contains 2 parts. First, we need to remove the malware, and after that fix the effects of its activity. The elimination process is pretty easy, due to the fact that it may be done even with using Microsoft Defender – security software that is available on all computers with Windows 8/10. Nonetheless, because of its significant resources utilization, as well as some defects that can be serious for some categories of users, Defender is oftentimes disabled by the users, so its utilization is probably impossible. Additionally, different trojan viruses have the ability to shut off the embedded antivirus. It is better to use the separated program that will not have such weakness.

I’d advise you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware² – a well-proven antivirus device that will undoubtedly remove the malware from your personal computer and create an invulnerable shield with a Proactive protection feature. But let’s manage Whackyblue adware initially.

Download GridinSoft Anti-Malware

Removing Whackyblue 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 Whackyblue 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 be connected the appropriate DNS while connecting to the site you want. Create a text file named “hosts” on your computer’s 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.

Nonetheless, there is one trouble that makes things a lot harder to repair, particularly without the anti-malware program. A lot of adware variations that are used to show you the Whackyblue pop-up ads are adjusting the deep browser setups, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to change your browser settings after your PC was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly crash soon. Sometimes, you will see no crash, however, large lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 seconds, and afterwards 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 overview and also the reasons why I suggest it for malware removal.
3. Official Microsoft guide for hosts file reset.