I have a Toshiba laptop that starts having tons of pop-up ads in Chrome daily. Mostly the pop-ups are titled with ‘Ads by Cloudscout’ and have various misleading information. I assume that there is adware on my computer but I can’t get rid of it. The application not only changes my default homepage, it also opens a completely different tab with some stupid offers, coupon, warning that I have a virus, saying I have a New Yahoo Message or that I have won something whenever I am online. It is obviously fake. Although the problem happens occasionally, not constantly, it is still making me crazy! How can I get rid of these things? I’ve tried AVG and CCleaner and neither of them seem to help. Can someone tell me how to remove Cloudscout ads for good?
If you see random pop-ups titled with ‘Ads by Cloudscout’ on your web browser, then you should realize some advertising-supported software (as known as adware) must have been installed onto your computer without your knowledge. Although adware is not malicious like other computer viruses, it is criticized because it usually includes code that tracks a user’s personal information and passes it on to third parties secretly. It even tracks your Internet surfing habits in order to serve more and more ads related to your interest. Generally speaking, Cloudscout adware is installed on your computer through two methods. It gets bundled with other potentially unwanted programs which are free for charge, or installed without your permission or knowledge through Windows or software vulnerabilities on your computer. Although this application is introduced as a very useful browser plug-in that is capable of blocking unsafe websites, such as pornographic, gambling or the ones that promote racism and violence, you should not leave it on your computer anyhow for it can modify your browser settings and create tons of computer problems.
Computer users should know that ‘Ads by Cloudscout’ pop up is only designed to boost advertising revenue but not provide you anything useful. It helps invite browser hijacking malware that can cause system slow down problem, annoying pop-up ads, homepage modification, annoying browser redirection, and other inconveniences. This application is able to attack web browsers including Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome and even Safari. Once downloaded, it starts displaying its pop-up ads, banner-type ads, search ads, text ads whenever it wants to do that. And if you click any of its pop-ups, you may be redirected to compromised web site that may ask you to fill in your private information or download other malware or spyware. Stay away from ‘Ads by Cloudscout’ ads and you need to clean up your PC 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 adware. For this type of adware, it can keep giving you Ads by EnormouSales 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.
Ads by Cloudscout 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 Ads by Cloudscout 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 Ads by Cloudscout 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
Ads by Cloudscout pop-up is an adware program that conducts a lot of horrible actions on your computer, especially on your web browser. It can change settings on Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome and even Safari and keep displaying endless ads to trick you into clicking them, so you will have a hard time surfing online. Typically this adware can silently get attached to web browsers after you download freeware, shareware or advertising-supported program. Even though Cloudscout pop-ups seem to be attractive, you should not click any of them. Otherwise it will redirect you to malicious or porn-related web sites that contain high-risk viruses immediately. Besides, this adware contains a tracking cookie designed to keep track of how many times you visit a website and how long you stay, your browser type, your IP address, and other web surfing activities. Those information could be sent back to the cookie’s host site so that it will lead your personal information exposed. To keep your PC safe, you have to remove Cloudscout ads quickly without any hesitation.
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 May 28, 2015 2:03 am, last updated on May 28, 2015 2:03 am
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