I have a Dell laptop running with Windows 7. Over the past couple of days my internet browsing has been interrupted quite frequently by numerous types of pop up ads titled with ‘Ads by Freedealsapp.’ Is it a virus or something malicious? How do I get rid of it? My computer became extremely slow, and overheats after 2 hours of use and lags a lot. I spent 5 hours doing a full scan with AVG but it didn’t help at all. It found some threats and removed it but I still get the same ads on Internet Explorer. I’d really appreciate a solution now. Thanks.
If you keep receiving pop-up ads titled with ‘Ads by Freedealsapp,’ that indicates that there must be some kind of adware or potentially unwanted programs downloaded on your computer without your knowledge. Fortunately they don’t belong to computer viruses, however ads generated by adware or PUP can be very annoying because they can pop up everytime whenever you go online, in different kinds of forms such as pop-up, pop-under, in-text, contextual or banner advertisement. It aims to interrupt your browsing activities and cause further damages on your machine. Besides, a PUP can help modify your browser settings and even take control of your web browsers including Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome so you should not let it stay on your computer any longer.
Once Freedealsapp ads are shown on your web browser, it will be very difficult for you to surf online properly. This threat keeps giving you constant pop-ups about various deals, coupons and commercial offers and won’t let you stop them. It may also carry many dangerous codes which can do harm to the whole system and probably collect your personal information, such as your browsing history, search queries, top visited sites or even your IP and email addresses secretly. Although on its official page, it claims Freedealsapp is a good program that can help you save both your time and money while you are shopping online by providing you with valuable coupons, discount deals and other commercial offers, but the truth is it’s just a trick designed by adware designer who want to earn money from the increasing artificial traffic. Once you downloaded this program, problems will come one by one on your machime. Those adware producer also adjusts their advertisements according to collected data and make them even more attractive and relevant to users this way. It is suggested users stay away from Freedealsapp ads and don’t click on any pop up titled with ‘Ads by Freedealsapp’ because it will redirect you to questionable web sites that may compromise your privacy or lure you into buying unwanted programs. All you need to do is to get rid of Freedealsapp adware manually.
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 adware. For this type of adware, it can keep giving you Freedealsapp 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.
Freedealsapp 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 Freedealsapp adware 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 Freedealsapp 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
Freedealsapp is categorized as adware that is usually distributed along with other free applications. That means you may not have an intention to download this software but it comes together with other programs you tried to download before. Adware is not easy to be uninstalled because most of time it won’t be shown in control panel so you cannot uninstall it like the same way you remove other legitimate software. Once installed, it will add malicious codes in random places which can take over your current web browser and change it to shady website, or bring you tons of ads about coupons, deals or other offers. In addition, it can slow down your Internet speed in order to generate more and more pop-up ads and even make your computer crash randomly. Therefore, if you have noticed advertisements labeled with slogan “Ads by Freedealsapp” on any of your web browsers you should be aware that your computer is definitely infected and you need to take actions to clean it.
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 December 23, 2014 9:23 am, last updated on December 23, 2014 9:36 am
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