Remove “Ads by CosstMinn” Adware

Is your computer bombarded with undesired popups whenever you are surfing online? If you see pop-ups titled with Ads by cosstMinn or Powered by cosstMinn, then your computer must have adware or other PUP (also called Potentially Unwanted Program) inside. Please follow the manual guide in this article and clean up your PC as soon as possible. 

CosstMinn Adware Description:

Ads by CosstMinn is an undesired pop-up associated with annoying advertising-supported software that can display itself on most popular web browsers like IE, Firefox and Chrome. This adware can cause troubles on the computer especially even though it is not considered as a virus. However, it can dispense excessive advertisements on your browser and also put your privacy at high risk. Adware like this one can record your web browsing activities, web sites visited, search keyword, and other vital data in order to show you more and more pop-up ads and attract your attention. If you click on those ads, you will end up installing malware or other unwanted programs immediately.

Normally CosstMinn adware is designed to promote commercial software and boost affiliate payments. Its effect can be visible during web browsing activities. At first, you may notice that your homepage and default search engine are changed to a bogus search engine page or other corrupted web pages without your permission. Also unfamiliar toolbars or extensions may be installed on your browser at the same time. It even injects scripts on the web browser to make browsing very unpleasant. During your browsing session, ads about coupons, deals or other misleading alerts like saying your computer is at risk will come one by one. Those ads will be filled with your computer screen, preventing you to view the web page you wish properly. Once you clicked on these ads,  browser will be redirected to an endorser web site, which in return will generate profit for adware authors. Now there are reports saying that adware can steal sensitive data like online user name and password, bank details etc., therefore it is urgent to remove “Ads by CosstMinn” adware from the computer.

Adware May Initiate the Following Symptoms:

1. It can not only change your web pages, but also alter other settings to add toolbars, pop-up advertisements, and bookmarks that you did not create.
2. It can modify the homepage settings of your web browser, more commonly by reducing your internet security options. And the worse thing is it prevents you from changing them back.
3. New toolbars or Favorites are installed that give you icons and links to web pages that you don’t want.
4. It may block you from visiting certain website you’d like to visit and show an error page instead.
5. It will display constant pop-up ads, sometimes in such large amounts that you are not able to close neither the ads nor the browser.

“Ads by CosstMinn” Adware Manual Removal Guides:

Malware associated with CosstMinn adware hijacks your browser in order to redirect your web search results and change your homepage and browser settings. To completely uninstall it from an infected system, manual removal is the first choice because sometimes antivirus software cannot pick up the exact computer threat timely or remove it permanently. Now most browser hijackers are quite similar to spyware and adware threats and therefore cannot be removed with the help of popular antivirus products. Users can follow the manual guide here to get rid of this browser hijacker completely.

1. Clear all the cookies of your affected browsers.

Since this tricky hijacker virus has the ability to use cookies for tracing and tracking the internet activity of users, it is suggested users delete all the cookies before a complete removal.

Google Chrome:

Click on the “Tools” menu and click the “Clear browsing data” button.
Select “Delete cookies and other site data” to delete all cookies from the list.

Internet Explorer:
Open Internet explorer window
Click the “Tools” button
Point to “safety” and then click “delete browsing history”
Tick the “cookies” box, then click “delete”

Mozilla Firefox:

Click on Tools, then Options, select Privacy
Click “Remove individual cookies”
In the Cookies panel, click on “Show Cookies”
To remove a single cookie click on the entry in the list and click on the “Remove Cookie”
To remove all cookies click on the “Remove All Cookies” button

2. End the malicious process from Task Manager.

Once CosstMinn pop-up ads is installed, computer user may notice that CPU usage randomly jumps to 100 percent. At any time Windows always has many running processes. A process is an individual task that the computer runs. In general, the more processes, the more work the computer has to do and the slower it will run. If your system’s CPU spike is constant and remain at a constant 90-95%, users should check from Task Manager and see if there is a suspicious process occupying the system resources and then end it immediately.

(The name of the virus process can be random.)

Press Ctrl+Shift+Esc to quickly bring up Task Manager Window：

3. Show hidden files and folders.

Open Folder Options by clicking the Start button, clicking Control Panel, clicking Appearance and Personalization, and then clicking Folder Options.

Click the View tab.

Under Advanced settings, click Show hidden files and folders, uncheck Hide protected operating system files (Recommended) and then click OK.

4. Remove all the malicious files related to CosstMinn Pop-up manually.

%AppData%Local[random].exe
C:\Documents and Settings\LocalService\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\*.exe

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main StartPage
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run

Video Shows You How to Safely Modify Windows Registry Editor:

CosstMinn (Ads by cosstMinn) is considered as adware due to its goal of earning online profit via ads that it shows on user’s computer. Adware like CosstMinn and its fellow may enter your system as an add-on for your browser or bundled-up with some free software. Most of time, it can be downloaded from a website you visited, something you clicked on, or a pop-up that you did not request to view. You may not even know when and how you download CosstMinn which compromises your internet security until you find your computer is fully messed up. It can redirect your Internet searches to random sites, reduce your computer performance and generate other pop-ups to disturb you. To protect your computer, Ads by cosstMinn should be removed as soon as possible.

Note: If you are not a computer expert and have no idea how to perform the removal, please contact experts from YooCare Online Tech Support for further help.

Published by on July 28, 2014 10:28 am, last updated on July 30, 2014 5:20 am