Whenever I browse online, I got tons of spark cast ads that are extremely annoying. How can I stop those annoying pop up ads from appearing on my computer? I have pop up blocker on, but I still get them. How do they come to my computer? Any help will be highly appreciated.
If you keep receiving Spark Cast pop-up ads whenever you browse online, then your computer must have been attacked by adware, browser hijacker or PUPs(as known as potentially unwanted programs). Spark Cast is an advertising platform used by adware program to generate pop-up ads and boost Internet traffic. Technically speaking, this type of malware is not a virus, but it can modify your browser settings without your permission so you will be always troubled by this Spark Cast pop-up ads whenever you browse online. This adware pretends to be a good program that helps you save your time and money while you are shopping online. It displays various deals, offers and coupons to interrupt your browser activities. Once you click on the ads, it will redirect you to shady website that may contain various malware or promote unwanted programs. If you attempt to purchase something, you can even get scammed and lose your money.
Spark Cast Ads won’t save your time nor money. They come in an annoying manner of advertisements, such as pop-up, pop-under, in-text and banner ads and appear on any web browsers you’ve installed that include Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome and even Safari. It modifies your default homepage and adds unwanted toolbar to your web browser. Further more, it can redirect you to web pages that contain malware or spyware and add tracking cookies to learn your browsing habits in order to provide you with the relevant advertisements. The adware is not friendly, it may constantly use your internet connection to send your private information to remote servers, as well as receive ads and pop-ups from third party servers, which causes much slower internet connection speed and overall connection instability. As mentioned above, Spark Cast pop-ups can lead you to some more severe cyber security problems and it should be removed as soon as possible.
If you open your browser window (includes IE, Firefox, Safari and Google Chrome etc.) and notice immediately that your home page has been changed to a page you do not recognize, then your browser may have been hijacked by a virus. For this type of hijack virus, it can keep giving you Spark Cast pop-up ads. Other malicious activities can be shown on your computer after hijacked are listed below:
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.
Spark Cast pop up hijacks your browser to redirect your web search results and changes the 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 Spark Cast redirect 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 Spark Cast ads hijacker 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
Spark Cast pop-up is generated by potentially unwanted program that can pose significant risks to Internet users. This program belongs to any of advertising-supported software that can install and appear itself on your current web browser without asking your permission. It could add itself on web browsers like google Chrome, Firefox or Internet Explorer. Once it is downloaded, it performs tons of malicious activities on your machine especially for interrupting your browsing sessions. To more specific, while you are surfing the Web you must have a barrage of pop-up windows flood your screen along with various annoying advertisements, pop-ups, coupons, special offers or web site ratings. Don’t be tricked by those fake messages, any click may lead to money loss or even identify theft. Usually it travels bundled with some free software that can be downloaded from the Internet. Stay away from those unreliable downloads, and you had better get rid of Spark Cast pop-up manually.
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 & last updated on October 17, 2014 1:53 am
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