Does this sound familiar? You see pop-up ads from n82adshostnet.com while browsing at web sites that typically don’t advertise in pop-up windows. The pop-ups manage to bypass the built-in pop-up blockers in Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer or Safari. Maybe the n82adshostnet.com pop-ups appear when clicking search results from a Google search? Or does the pop-ups show up even when you’re not browsing?

Here is a screen capture on the n82adshostnet.com pop-up from my computer:

If this description sounds like your story, you almost certainly have some adware installed on your machine that pops up the n82adshostnet.com ads. Don’t send angry emails to the website you were browsing, the ads are most likely not coming from them, but from the adware on your system. I’ll do my best to help you remove the n82adshostnet.com pop-up in this blog post.

For those that are new to the blog: Some time ago I dedicated a few of my lab machines and deliberately installed some adware programs on them. I have been following the behaviour on these systems to see what kinds of advertisements that are displayed. I’m also looking on other interesting things such as if the adware updates itself automatically, or if it downloads additional unwanted software on the machines. I first spotted the n82adshostnet.com pop-up on one of these lab machines.

n82adshostnet.com resolves to 199.80.53.172. The domain is protected by Domains By Proxy, LLC.

So, how do you remove the n82adshostnet.com pop-up ads? On the machine where I got the n82adshostnet.com ads I had Windows Menager, Live Malware Protection, gosearch.me and SmartComp Safe Network installed. I removed them with FreeFixer and that stopped the n82adshostnet.com pop-ups and all the other ads I was getting in Mozilla Firefox.

If you are wonder if there are many others out there also getting the n82adshostnet.com ads, the answer is probably yes. Check out the traffic rank from Alexa:

The problem with pop-ups like this one is that it can be initiated by many variants of adware, not just the adware that’s installed on my computer. This makes it impossible to say exactly what you need to remove to stop the pop-ups.

To remove the n82adshostnet.com pop-up ads you need to examine your machine for adware or other types of unwanted software and uninstall it. Here’s my suggested removal procedure:

1. What software do you have installed if you look in the Add/Remove programs dialog in the Windows Control Panel? Something that you don’t remember installing yourself or that was recently installed?
2. You can also review the add-ons that you have in your browser. Same thing here, do you see something that you don’t remember installing?
3. If that didn’t solve the problem, I’d recommend a scan with FreeFixer to manually track down the adware. FreeFixer is a freeware tool that I’m working on that scans your computer at lots of locations, such as browser add-ons, processes, Windows services, recently modified files, etc. If you want to get additional details about a file in the scan result, you can click the More Info link for that file and a web page will open up with a VirusTotal report which will be very useful to determine if the file is safe or malware:

   

Here you can see FreeFixer in action removing the adware that caused pop-up ads:

Did you find any adware on your machine? Did that stop the n82adshostnet.com ads? Please post the name of the adware you uninstalled from your machine in the comment below.

Thank you!

Update 2015-12-17, there’s a bunch of similar domains:

n0adshostnet.com
n1adshostnet.com
n2adshostnet.com
n3adshostnet.com
n4adshostnet.com
n5adshostnet.com
n6adshostnet.com
n7adshostnet.com
n8adshostnet.com
n9adshostnet.com
n10adshostnet.com
n11adshostnet.com
n12adshostnet.com
n13adshostnet.com
n14adshostnet.com
n15adshostnet.com
n16adshostnet.com
n17adshostnet.com
n18adshostnet.com
n19adshostnet.com
n20adshostnet.com
n21adshostnet.com
n22adshostnet.com
n23adshostnet.com
n24adshostnet.com
n25adshostnet.com
n26adshostnet.com
n27adshostnet.com
n28adshostnet.com
n29adshostnet.com
n30adshostnet.com
n31adshostnet.com
n32adshostnet.com
n33adshostnet.com
n34adshostnet.com
n35adshostnet.com
n36adshostnet.com
n37adshostnet.com
n38adshostnet.com
n39adshostnet.com
n40adshostnet.com
n41adshostnet.com
n42adshostnet.com
n43adshostnet.com
n44adshostnet.com
n45adshostnet.com
n46adshostnet.com
n47adshostnet.com
n48adshostnet.com
n49adshostnet.com
n50adshostnet.com
n51adshostnet.com
n52adshostnet.com
n53adshostnet.com
n54adshostnet.com
n55adshostnet.com
n56adshostnet.com
n57adshostnet.com
n58adshostnet.com
n59adshostnet.com
n60adshostnet.com
n61adshostnet.com
n62adshostnet.com
n63adshostnet.com
n64adshostnet.com
n65adshostnet.com
n66adshostnet.com
n67adshostnet.com
n68adshostnet.com
n69adshostnet.com
n70adshostnet.com
n71adshostnet.com
n72adshostnet.com
n73adshostnet.com
n74adshostnet.com
n75adshostnet.com
n76adshostnet.com
n77adshostnet.com
n78adshostnet.com
n79adshostnet.com
n80adshostnet.com
n81adshostnet.com
n83adshostnet.com
n84adshostnet.com
n85adshostnet.com
n86adshostnet.com
n87adshostnet.com
n88adshostnet.com
n89adshostnet.com
n90adshostnet.com
n91adshostnet.com
n92adshostnet.com
n93adshostnet.com
n94adshostnet.com
n95adshostnet.com
n96adshostnet.com
n97adshostnet.com
n98adshostnet.com
n99adshostnet.com