Probably, each user was faced with the fact that his computer at startup launches a browser on its own, which opens obscure links. Also, there are often cases when obscene or spam blocks appear on social networks or on the pages of decent content sites. What does this mean and how dangerous is similar for your computer?
Advertising on the Internet - what is it like?
Advertising on site pages is different:
- Contextual advertising that appears in certain places on the site, designed specifically for the location of such advertising. It practically does not interfere and can be blocked by special extensions - anti-banners.
- Ad units that appear where they shouldn't be. Advertising is not blocked by extensions and when you try to close the block manually, a new tab with the advertisement opens.
- Ads that appear in new tabs when the browser starts.
The second and third types of advertising are very annoying for users, since they appear where they should not be and it is difficult to deal with them - by closing the tab, you cannot protect yourself from preventing it from appearing again. Why is this happening and how to make sure that new tabs with ads no longer open?
The reason is the virus!
Undoubtedly, many users, when they constantly have tabs with ads, scan their computer for viruses and check startup. Most often, in such cases, the antivirus program does not detect anything, and there is nothing suspicious or superfluous in startups. But there is a problem with the appearance of new tabs and does not disappear anywhere. If the antivirus program did not find problems, then there are no viruses, but what is it then?
In fact, this is the result of a kind of "pest". Antivirus programs do not see it due to the fact that it is written directly in the browser.
He can appear in many ways. Sometimes tabs with ads open after installing the software of a suspicious developer. Other elements may be included in the installation files of such software, therefore it is very important during installation of such programs to pay attention to the whole process and note that in addition to the necessary programs, it is proposed to install and remove the checkmarks from the corresponding items in time.
How to get rid of intrusive advertising?
If the advertisement began to appear after the software was installed from an unverified developer, it would be logical to simply remove the program and all the elements that were installed with it. But, as practice shows, this does not solve the problem, and tabs with advertising still open. You can solve the problem in the following ways:
- Change the properties of the browser shortcut
- Use appropriate utilities.
Browser shortcut options and change
The information is relevant for various browsers: Google Chrome, Mazil, Safari, Opera. An advertising tab opens because the properties of the browser shortcut have been changed. Antivirus will not be able to determine this, so you will have to manually check and fix everything.
Check if this is the reason for the appearance of new tabs, perhaps in the following way:
- Find a shortcut on your desktop browser.
- Right-click on the shortcut to bring up the context menu and select the "Properties" item.
- In the window that appears, pay attention to the line "Object" - the path to the browser should be written there. If after the browser name and extension (the extension must be *. Exe) is the address of any site, then the problem is changing the settings for the shortcut.
Just deleting what is written after the location of the browser in the "Object" line will not work - the operating system blocks such edits. But there is a solution. To do this, do the following:
- Open file location. In the properties of the shortcut there is a button "File Location", it will help you quickly jump to the right place.
- In the list that opens, find the file "Internet Browser Application".
- Select it and right-click the context menu.
- In the context menu, find "Send" => "Desktop" (create a shortcut).
- Remove the old shortcut from the desktop.
- After the done actions, check the properties of the new shortcut. The string object must end with the name of the browser with the extension of the application.
Note: if the old shortcut was docked on the taskbar, remove it from there and pin the new shortcut.
After performing such actions, the browser after launching opens its start page.
Utilities to combat advertising in new tabs
In order not to do all the work of detecting and removing viruses manually, they use special utilities. These programs are able to find what your antivirus program missed and fix the problem that opens advertising tabs.
In order to check the computer, install into the program and then run the scan. There are free versions of such utilities and paid ones with a trial period. One such freeware is Malwarebytes Antimalware. It is easy to use and does not conflict with antiviruses.
No matter how good the utilities are, they are not always able to solve such problems, and therefore you have to manually do everything yourself. Sometimes you even need to demolish all the browsers and reinstall them.
By the way, reinstalling your web browser does not always help. Why does the advertising tab open after reinstallation? Most likely, during uninstallation, the hidden folders in which the viruses were saved were not deleted. You can find them at the address "C: \ Users \ username \ AppData \ Local \", as well as "C: \ Users \ username \ AppData \ Roaming \".
How to protect yourself from such problems
Certain prevention reduces the risk of difficulties, as a result of which tabs with advertising are opened. First of all, you need to pay attention to the antivirus that is installed on the computer. Ideally, this should be a licensed version with the latest updates. Secondly, do not download and install software from untested developers. If there is no other way out, follow the installation process and prevent the installation of unnecessary objects.
Timely check and prevention is the best protection of your computer against malware.