The browser opens tabs with advertisements, what should I do? Removing pop-up ads and extraneous tabs in browsers

Probably every user has encountered the fact that when his computer starts, it automatically loads a browser in which strange links open. There are also often cases when blocks of an obscene nature or containing spam appear on social networks or on the pages of websites with decent content. What does this mean and how dangerous is this for your computer?

Advertising on the Internet - what is it like?

which 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.
Blocks with advertisements that appear where they should not be. Advertising is not blocked by extensions and when you try to close the block manually, a new tab with advertising opens.
Ads that appear in new tabs when you launch the browser.

The second and third greatly irritate 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 it not appearing again. Why does this happen and how can I make sure that people don’t open with ads anymore?

The reason is a virus!

Undoubtedly, many users, when they constantly open tabs with advertising, 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 unnecessary in startups. But the problem with the appearance of new tabs exists and does not disappear. If the antivirus program does not find any problems, then there are no viruses, but what is it then?

In fact, this is the result of the presence of a kind of “pest”. Antivirus programs do not see it because it is registered directly in the browser.

It can appear in different ways. Sometimes tabs with advertisements open after installing software from a suspicious developer. The installation files of such software may contain other elements, so it is very important when installing such programs to pay attention to the entire process and notice that in addition to the necessary programs, it is proposed to install and uncheck the appropriate boxes in time.

How to get rid of intrusive advertising?

If advertisements started appearing after you installed software from an unverified developer, it would be logical to simply uninstall the program and all the items that were installed with it. But, as practice shows, this does not solve the problem, and tabs with advertising still open. You can resolve the issue in the following ways:

change the properties of the web browser shortcut;
use the appropriate utilities.

Browser shortcut settings and changing them

The information is relevant for various browsers: Google Chrome, Mazila, Safari, Opera. An advertising tab opens because the browser shortcut properties have been changed. The antivirus will not be able to detect this, so you will have to check and correct everything manually.

You can check whether this is the reason for the appearance of new tabs in the following way:

Find the browser shortcut on your desktop.
Right-click on the shortcut and select "Properties".
In the window that appears, pay attention to the “Object” line - the path to the browser should be written there. If after the browser name there should be *.exe) there is an address of any site, then the problem is changing the shortcut parameters.

Simply deleting what is written after the browser location in the “Object” line will not work - the operating system blocks such edits. But there is a solution. To do this you need to do the following:

Open file location. In the shortcut properties there is a "File location" button, it will help you quickly go to the desired location.
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 these steps, check the properties of the new shortcut. The object string must end with the name of the browser with the application extension.

Note: If the old shortcut was pinned to the taskbar, remove it from there and pin the new shortcut.

After performing these steps, the browser opens its start page after launch.

Utilities to combat advertising in new tabs

In order not to do all the identification work manually, special utilities are used. These programs can find what your antivirus program missed and fix the problem that causes tabs to open with ads.

In order to check the computer, install the program and then start scanning. There are free versions of such utilities and paid ones with a trial period. One such free program 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 do everything manually yourself. Sometimes you even need to remove all browsers and install them again.

By the way, reinstalling the web browser does not always help. Why does a tab with advertising open after reinstallation? Most likely, during uninstallation, hidden folders in which viruses were stored 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 that result in opening tabs with advertising. First of all, you need to pay attention to the antivirus that is installed on your computer. Ideally, this should be a licensed version with the latest updates. Secondly, you should not download and install software from unverified developers. If there is no other way out, monitor the installation process and prevent the installation of unnecessary objects.

Timely scanning and prevention is the best protection for your computer against malware.

If tabs with advertisements open or some tabs do not close, there may be several reasons for this. Let's start with something simple: for example, you open your browser and immediately a page or several opens that you cannot close. There may be several reasons for this. Firstly, if tabs with advertisements are opened in Opera, then this is possible due to some influence of a virus that has registered these pages in a shortcut or in the hosts file. Secondly, if the same tabs open when you start the browser, then perhaps these are pinned pages and you just need to unpin and delete them. To correct the consequences of the virus, you need to check the hosts file and the properties of your browser shortcut.

Cleaning the hosts file

The hosts file can be found on your computer at C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc.

Place the cursor over the hosts file and by right-clicking, select Open with from the context menu that opens. A context window will open entitled How do you want to open this file in which you need to select Notepad from the list. A window will open with text in which it should be approximately the same as in the picture.

In Opera, tabs open in a new window that are registered in the hosts file

This file should not contain any other extra numbers in the form of a list. If you have written something unnecessary, you will need to close this text document. Then you need to copy the hosts file and paste it onto your desktop. On the desktop, open the hosts file again and edit it, deleting everything unnecessary, and when you finish editing, close notepad and save. After that, copy the just edited hosts file to your desktop. Then, in the etc folder, delete the hosts file and paste the hosts file you just edited. Your hosts file will now work correctly.

Cleaning the browser shortcut

Your browser's shortcut is usually located on your desktop. Place the cursor over the browser shortcut and press the right mouse button. A context menu will open in which you will need to select Properties.

If an advertisement opens in a new tab in Opera, check the properties of the browser shortcut

A window will open in which you need to go to the Shortcut tab. On this tab you need to find a field called Object and there should be a line in it like “C:\Program Files (x86)\Opera\launcher.exe”. This line must end with launcher.exe, and if there are any other words after this word, then they must be deleted and then close the window by clicking on the OK button. Your shortcut will now open the browser correctly.

Removing pinned tabs

If pinned pages open in your browser, in order to remove them you must first unpin them. To do this, move the cursor over the pinned page icon located on the tab bar and click the right mouse button.

If Opera tabs are constantly opening, you need to unfreeze them

A context menu will open in which you need to select Unlock tab. After this, you can close the tab by clicking on the cross on it.

Disable specified tabs

Pages can open in the browser themselves if they are specified in the browser settings. To disable tabs in Opera, you need to go to the browser settings by pressing two Alt+P keys on your keyboard at the same time.

How to remove tabs with advertisements in Opera

In the settings, in the paragraph called When starting, put a dot next to the Continue from the same place item. After this, you can close the settings and the next time your browser will open only tabs that you have not closed.

Closing unclosed tabs

If you went to some site and some kind of advertisement opened because of which the tab in the opera is not deleted, then you need to do the following steps. On your keyboard, press three keys Ctrl+Alt+Del at the same time.

If tabs in Opera do not switch, try launching Task Manager from the keyboard

A list of tasks that you can do will open. From the list you need to select Task Manager. After this, you need to immediately click on the cross in your browser, which is located on the tab bar of your non-closing page. After this, the page should close.

Advertising on the Internet has an ambiguous position. On the one hand, they allow you to attract an audience, earn money or promote your product. For beginning manufacturers, advertising on the Internet can become a “starting point.” But on the other hand, constantly seeing inappropriate pop-up banners that interfere with browsing pages is quite unpleasant, especially if their number is much more than necessary. Sometimes it gets to the point that advertising takes up 70% of the free space.

How to deal with this? In fact, there is nothing complicated about this, because developers regularly release software to combat advertising, and anti-virus tools are becoming more and more developed.

How to remove pop-up tabs with ads by removing malware and extensions

First of all, go to the control panel and open “Uninstall programs”.
Right-click on the empty space next to the program, select “Sorting” – “Installed”. Thus, the programs will be ordered by installation date, which means it will be much easier to identify the problem, since knowing when multiple advertising banners appeared, it is enough to analyze the applications installed on that date.

Pay attention to the applications of social steppes: Vkontakte, Youtube, Mail.ru, Odnoklassniki. Programs with the following names in their names: protect, search, helper, web, amigo can be potentially malicious.

Let's go to the menu.
“Additional tools.”
“Extensions”.

A whole list of extensions will appear in front of you; remove those that you have not personally installed.
Likewise in Opera and Mozilla.

We return to the “Menu”.
“History”, “Clear history”.
We highlight everything except media licenses.

How to remove tabs with advertising - check the browser for redirecting links

In this case:

Right-click on the browser shortcut.
Go to “Properties”.
If instead of the .exe extension there is a .url (as in the screenshot), manually change it to .exe.

Click “Apply”

How to remove pop-up tabs with advertising using additional software

Adblock Plus

The most popular browser extension, which is already successfully used by more than 50 million people. . To clear the page from advertising, you only need to install the extension, it will start working instantly, you don’t even need to restart the browser.

Go to your browser's extension store. For all browsers, the path is approximately the same: “menu”, “additional tools”, “extensions”.
Click on “more extensions” or “store”.
In the search, enter “Adblock plus”.
Click the “install” button.

Done, the application will be added and activated immediately.

Adguard

Unlike Adblock, Adguard is a full-fledged program that has anti-banner, anti-phishing and parental control functions. Available on the official website at https://adguard.com.

After installation, the program is completely ready to work at the network level. Simply put, it is more effective than browser extensions due to increased functionality and the absence of restrictions imposed by browsers.

The program includes in its functionality:

Anti-banner – blocking pop-up ads.
Anti-phishing – protecting your computer from viruses, malicious advertising and fraudulent applications.
Parental Controls – Sets restrictions on unsafe and adult sites.

Thus, before trying to eliminate annoying ads and pop-up banners, you need to determine its source and only then act based on it and the instructions provided.

Do not forget about online safety, do not download unverified programs and do not visit dubious sites.

If you are facing the problem of constantly being redirected to dubious websites, then there is a possibility that you have become infected with a redirect virus or Google Redirect Virus.

The redirect virus targets Google and other search engines to redirect the user to fake and other infected websites.

In most cases, redirected pages contain many advertisements. These ads usually convince users to pay for something or give out their bank account details. The main function of such viruses, or browser hijackers, is to track user actions and hack their data. Thus, the redirect virus is quite dangerous.

If your browser opens by itself with advertising, then this is also the work of malware. As in the first and second cases, this is AdWare - programs that show unwanted advertising. We will talk about how to get rid of this problem, as well as the redirect virus, below.

If your browser starts itself up, opening sites with advertisements or an error page, then this is the work of malware. What's scary about this problem is that it can persist even after you remove the malware. The thing is that even after removing the cause of the problem, the effects of the malware may remain, since it modifies the registry and Windows task scheduler, making entries in startup sections and creating tasks. Read below about how to solve this problem.

The browser starts itself and a website with advertising opens. Solution

If you don’t want your browser to live its own life, constantly opening unnecessary sites, you must delete system tasks - the original source of the problem. To solve it, follow the step-by-step instructions below:

Using the keyboard shortcut “Win+R”, open the “Run” window. In this window, paste “taskschd.msc”. Click "OK" to continue.
In the new window that appears, click on the task scheduler library, as in the example below.
You need to find the tasks that are to blame for your browser living on its own. The names of the tasks do not mean anything, since malware is perfectly camouflaged and cannot be detected this way. A distinctive feature of malicious tasks is that they are launched once every few minutes. You can select a task and go to the “Triggers” tab to look at the repetition frequency.
If you want to know what triggers a task, go to the Actions tab. Malicious programs launch websites using commands.
Disable any dubious tasks that make you suspicious. To do this, click on the task and click “Disable” (do not delete if you are not completely sure about the harmfulness of the task).

Check your browser to see if the problem is gone or not.

You can remove the redirect virus using an antivirus utility. This could be Kaspersky, Malwarebytes Anti Malware, or any other antivirus program you can trust. Such tools allow you to remove the virus along with all malicious files and unwanted programs. In our example, we will use the Malwarebytes Anti-Malware program.

Download Malwarebytes Anti-Malware and install it on your computer following the instructions during the installation process.
Open Malwarebytes Anti-Malware. You will be taken to the main page.
Go to Settings (bottom left) and then enable the Scan option for rootkits. To do this, click the switch so that it turns green.
Now that you have enabled rootkit scanning, click the Scan button.
Make sure Threat Scan is selected and then click the Start Scan button. If an update is available for Malwarebytes, it will automatically download and install it before running the scan.
Wait for the scan to finish. When it finishes, you will see a screen with all the malware, adware, etc. found.
Click on "Remove Selected". The antivirus will delete all selected files and add them to quarantine.

On a note! When deleting files, the program may require a reboot (to delete some of them). If you see a notification that says you need to restart, restart your computer. If you don't want to reboot, you can turn it off and on again. After removing malicious files, close the program.

Any other antivirus program works in a similar way. First it scans, and then you remove malicious files and viruses if they are found. In addition, this method will not only help get rid of viruses and threats, but will also protect your computer in the future, since an anti-virus program must be on every computer. If it is not there, then the computer is not protected and, therefore, is at risk.

Video - Brother itself opens advertisements, tabs with advertisements. Solution

Will an antivirus help?

The browser opens pages spontaneously due to a virus. It would be logical to use an antivirus installed on a PC, that is, conduct a deep scan. However, antivirus programs often do not see this kind of program.

However, it definitely won’t hurt to run a check, as other problems may also be discovered.

If the antivirus finds malware, it will immediately remove it. Since our goal is a little different - to remove advertising - we move on.

Additional Help

Go to the official website: http://adwcleaner.ru. Download and install the program.
Open the utility and click on the “Scan” button.
Clean up and restart your PC. Open the browser and check if the advertising has disappeared.

AVZ

Download the software and open it.
Click on the “Start” button in the program window.

Install this program on your computer. Official resource: https://ru.malwarebytes.com. Click on “Free download”. The principle of working with this program is identical: we check, delete or quarantine, and then restart the computer.

These programs do not conflict with the main antivirus, so there is no need to disable it during scans. The only condition is not to enable two checks at once.

Removing threats manually

As a rule, after checking the system with the above programs, the problem disappears. There are, of course, exceptions - the windows open anyway. Why is this happening? Most likely, the virus that is on your computer is of a rare type and is therefore recognized as safe code. In such cases, you need to take up manual cleaning. What exactly are we doing?

First, let's look at the Task Manager. How does it open?
1.Hold down the combination Ctrl+Alt+Del. Select the “Task Manager” section.

2.Switch to the “Processes” block.

3. We are looking for suspicious processes. If you are in doubt whether it is suspicious or not, enter the name of this process into any search engine and immediately get information about it.

4.Now right-click on the process to open the folder with the included file. Copy her address or write it down somewhere separate.

What should be done after this?
1.In Start, enter msconfig.

2.Go to the “Startup” tab. Disable unnecessary elements.

4.Open the “Folder Options” menu and check the box next to “Show hidden and system folders.” Then we go back to the folder whose location we wrote down and delete everything that is there.

5.Open the Registry Editor. In the “Find” line, enter the name of the file. All found entries must be deleted.

6.Open the “Services” menu. You can find it through Start again. Stopping suspicious services.

7.Restart the PC.

Fixing the hosts file

If tabs keep popping up, open the hosts file. Copy the path to the file into the Explorer line: Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts.

We launch the file through Notepad or another text editor. It must be opened as an administrator.
We remove everything located under the last “#” symbol. Save the changes to the file. If the system does not allow you to do this, save it as a separate file in another location, and then replace them.