HUGE mystery: Can't get Adware to go away no matter what I do?

Page 2 - Seeking answers? Join the Tom's Guide community: where nearly two million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.

angelness

Prominent
Apr 9, 2017
10
0
570
Adware has always been a joke to me. In the past, I've managed to easily remove it off my grandparent's PC or wherever I saw it. It's usually always either a toolbar or an extension. However, recently my PC has become infected and no matter what I do, IT WON'T GO AWAY! I've tried EVERYTHING and I'm really desperate :( This really is a huge mystery to me! I keep getting outbound requests from Google Chrome to sketchy websites but Malware Bytes keeps blocking them.

Here are the list of things I've tried to get rid of it:
•Check to see if there is any unwanted installed software
•Scanned my PC with 2 antivirus programs multiple times and always getting a positive clean result (Malware Bytes and Norton)
•Use Adware Cleaner (Which did manage to detect and remove several infections but I guess it came back and now it's not detecting anything)
•Changed my router's DNS server
•Flushed the DNS server
•Restarted my router
•Checked to see if there was a homepage for an unwanted website (There was and I removed it)
•Checked to see if there was an unwanted website added to my browser's shortcut
•Checked to see if there was an unwanted extension installed
•Uninstall and reinstall Google Chrome
•Cleared all the cookies
•Completely clear everything off my browser
•Used CCleaner on my PC
•Googled how to remove the specific adware and followed the steps
•Installed Hitman Pro and it detected nothing

Things I should mention, this problem first started on my laptop but then I built my first ever PC and the problem migrated over here for some reason. Same websites as well (Always Tradeexchage and PopCash). The adware never show up though. My firewall always tells me that it has blocked it. But I fear that they are adding more adware to my PC since sometimes I get 3 or 4 pop ups from different websites. They only pop up when I use Google Chrome. I think one tried to pop up when I used Microsoft Edge but the notification popped up when immediately when I clicked a link and the outbound request was from a different website than usual. I barely use Mozilla Firefox so I don't know if it pops up from there.

Please help me, in one month, I have had 800+ pop ups blocked by Malware Bytes. They are really annoying. Any help would be HIGHLY appreciated!

Screenshot of Malware Bytes reports:
a4fa17f0feb222a854eb9b8aa7f6ec38.gif
 
Solution
Hello, everyone! It's been about a week and the pop ups seemed to have finally gone away! The nightmare seems to be finally over.
This might be premature, who knows, but this is the longest I've ever gone without a single pop up. It's been about a week.

So to anyone who might be reading this and might have this exact problem, let me tell you what I did:
1) At least try everything listed in the original post
2) Uninstalled Tampermonkey
3) Uninstalled any unnecessary addons/plug ins (EVEN THE ONES I TRUSTED)
4) On Chrome went to Settings>Advanced> Privacy and Security>Content Settings>Cookies and then I cleared everything that was unfamiar to me or unwanted under "All cookies and site data" and then under "Block...

angelness

Prominent
Apr 9, 2017
10
0
570
Hello, everyone! It's been about a week and the pop ups seemed to have finally gone away! The nightmare seems to be finally over.
This might be premature, who knows, but this is the longest I've ever gone without a single pop up. It's been about a week.

So to anyone who might be reading this and might have this exact problem, let me tell you what I did:
1) At least try everything listed in the original post
2) Uninstalled Tampermonkey
3) Uninstalled any unnecessary addons/plug ins (EVEN THE ONES I TRUSTED)
4) On Chrome went to Settings>Advanced> Privacy and Security>Content Settings>Cookies and then I cleared everything that was unfamiar to me or unwanted under "All cookies and site data" and then under "Block third-party cookies" I specifically added any website I saw from my pop ups and blocked them from saving and reading cookies
411cefee60cf54b533cc176627dfddd9.png

5) Then I cleared my cookies and cache
That's all I did and now it has seemed to go away.

ALSO as a bonus to anyone who wants to prevent ever getting this nasty adware, I did discover the origin of where I got it and I found a list of websites where it could be found.
I got it from myreadingmanga for sure.100% without a doubt. I recognize it and I've been there several times on mobile (which doesn't have adblock and is synced to the Chrome on my phone so it explains how I got it on my PC and Laptop)
cbab559d621baaeb46cc67a228ff1eb6.png

Just avoid any of these websites and you should be good to go.
Funny thing is that I mentioned earlier in the post that the pop ups seemed to come out a lot more often I used any Google website and it turns out they use Google Analytic as a tool for their pop ups. Interesting!
This is where I learned about them:
http://sitealerts.com/site/popcash.net

HUGE THANKS TO EVERYONE! :love:If it returns then I'll make a new thread or something but hopefully that won't be necessary.
 
Solution