What is Moatads?
If commercial advertisements coming from the Moatads advertising domain bother you every day and you cannot get rid of them, it means that you a) keep visiting some kind of dubious page that contains these ads or b) you have encountered some kind of malicious application. Unfortunately, it is usually the latter case, as specialists working at anti-spyware-101.com have noticed. We believe that malware has successfully entered your computer and modified the hosts file right away too. If you take no action, irritating commercial advertisements will keep appearing on your screen, and you might even be one day exposed to potential threats. This is one of the main reasons we cannot allow you to live with Moatads advertisements on your screen. We do not promise that it will be easy to eliminate those ads, but we are sure you will still make them all gone with our help, so start the removal procedure immediately after you finish reading this article.
What does Moatads do?
If you are reading this article from the beginning, you must already know that advertisements coming from Moatads might be quite dangerous even if you discover them placed on legitimate websites. In the worst-case scenario, a single click on any of these advertisements will result in the entrance of untrustworthy software. The automatic download of malicious software should not start, but you might be taken straight to a malicious third-party page. Not much is known about these pages promoted by Moatads ads. According to experienced specialists, some of them might open legitimate websites, whereas others might display malicious ads that lead to corrupted pages. Such pages might contain malware and install it on users’ PCs when they click on malicious links available on them. In addition, you might be taken to a page that will tell you that you could win an expensive item, e.g., the newest iPhone if you enter your name, surname, email address, and/or other personal details. Of course, this is a pure lie. Instead, it is more likely that the provided information will be sold in the black market or shared with third parties. Keep in mind that you might click on those Moatads ads accidentally, so you should make them all gone if you want to be safe. Most likely, closing the default web browser and launching it again will not be an effective solution to the problem.
Where does Moatads come from?
You might be presented with Moatads ads after opening an untrustworthy domain, but the chances are still higher that they are shown to you because some kind of malicious application has entered the system successfully and modified the hosts file located in %Windir%\System32\drivers\etc. Because of this, annoying Moatads ads might be visible even on decent pages. Untrustworthy applications that can make modifications on users’ PCs in order to show ads usually arrive on users’ computers bundled, but, of course, it could have been installed on your computer somehow differently too. No matter how this has happened, this does not change the fact that you need to undo the changes applied so that you will no longer see ads. Read the next paragraph for more details.
How to delete Moatads
You cannot remove Moatads because it is not an ordinary application. Instead, it is an advertising domain showing commercial advertisements on users’ screens. If you see those ads periodically, this suggests that it is not the problem of the opened dubious domain. It is more likely that you have encountered malicious software – it has made modifications on your computer. Specifically speaking, the %Windir%\System32\drivers\etc\hosts file has been modified. You need to open it, check it, and remove all suspicious entries from it. On top of that, it would also be smart to reset browsers displaying advertisements to default because certain changes could have been applied to them too.
Delete Moatads
Reset Internet Explorer/Mozilla Firefox/Google Chrome
Internet Explorer
- Launch Internet Explorer.
- Tap Alt+T simultaneously.
- Click Internet Options and then open the Advanced tab.
- Click Reset.
- Mark the box next to Delete personal settings.
- Click Reset.
Mozilla Firefox
- Start Mozilla Firefox.
- Open Help by tapping Alt+H simultaneously.
- Click Troubleshooting information.
- Click the Refresh Firefox button at the top of the window.
- Click Refresh Firefox in the confirmation box.
Google Chrome
- Launch Google Chrome.
- Press Alt+F.
- Select Settings.
- Click Advanced.
- Click Reset.
Check the hosts file
- Open Explorer by pressing Win+E.
- Open %Windir%\System32\drivers\etc\hosts.
- Select Notepad to open this file with.
- Check all entries it contains and remove 34.195.153.94 z.moatads.com if it is there.
- Save the changes.
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