How To Remove Gift Card Giveaway Scam Adware

Tips To Delete Gift Card Giveaway Scam Virus

Gift Card Giveaway Scam is promoted on multiple hazardous websites. In this scam, users are offered fake gift cards for popular brands or services such as eBay, Microsoft, Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, PlayStation, PayPal, Roblox etc. You are often redirected such deceptive web pages by adware or potentially unwanted program which is already installed on your computer. However, trusting these offers can lead to a number of notorious issues in your work-station. This nasty adware usually enters the targeted devices secretly without being noticed by the users and then starts performing malicious activities in the background.

More About Gift Card Giveaway Scam:

When you visit a site running Gift Card Giveaway Scam, you can choose a brand or service and accept a gift card for it. Such types of scams generally offer prizes or promise reward for completing short surveys. Nevertheless, when you try to acquire the promised gift, you will be asked to provide your personal information such as user name, telephone numbers, addresses, banking account or credit card details, emails and so on. Your sensitive data can be misused by scammers to further scams, make illusive money transactions or Online purchases and so on. Moreover, you might be asked to make fake paying like subscription, registration, fake shipping and other fees. If you do so, you expose your financial details which can be misused in earlier mentioned ways.

Gift Card Giveaway Scam adware also displays other types of advertisements such as coupons, deals, banners, offers, discounts etc. And interrupts users’ Online sessions badly. These ads are based on pay-per-click mechanism and earn profits with each click people make on them. Clicking on these adverts though might redirect you to phishing, scamming or even malware-laden sites that are filled with malicious objects. Due to visiting on such infectious domains, you may end up with getting more precarious threats in the machine. This nasty PUP keeps executing malevolent acts in the background of your system which consumes huge amount of memory resources and drags down the overall computer performance severely. Gift Card Giveaway Scam virus causes the machine to respond in a very slow manner and take more than usual time to complete any task.

Software Bundles Often Hide Malevolent Content Inside Them:

There are a number of deceptive tactics through which such types of potentially undesired applications sneak into the targeted systems. But, the most common one is via freeware and shareware downloads. When third-parties share software and multiple additional tools for free, Cyber actors can misuse them and plant their vicious content right inside these software packages.

How To Prevent Adware Intrusion?

It is necessary to be very cautious while surfing the Internet to avoid being infected by PUPs. The way to avoid the installation of undesired additional components is by making sure the right configuration setting has been selected. It is worth mentioning here that you should avoid all downloading/installing modes that say “Quick” or “Recommended”. For safe and efficient downloading, you should always opt for “Advanced” or “Custom” settings as here you get complete control over the incoming contents. You just have to untick the tools that give a concerning look and choose only the main software.

Quick Glance

Name: Gift Card Giveaway Scam

Type: Adware, Potentially unwanted program, Phishing, Scam

Functionality: Offers fake gift cards and tries to collect users’ sensitive data, aims to redirect users to affiliated websites, promote sponsored products, services and programs and make Online revenues for the developers, Also steal users’ personal and confidential information and share them with hackers for evil purposes.

Symptoms: Fake pop-up messages, endless intrusive ads, default Internet search engine, identity theft, new tab settings. Users are enforced to visit hijacker’s website and search the Internet using their search engines, slowness of infected system’s performance.

Distribution methods: Free software installers (bundling), Deceptive emails, malicious pop-ups ads, fake flash player installers.

Damage: Internet browsing tracking (potential privacy issues), displaying of unwanted ads, redirects to shady websites.

Removal: To get rid of this infection and other malware threats, our security researchers recommend scanning your computer with a powerful anti-malware tool.

Other Common Symptoms of Gift Card Giveaway Scam virus:

In order to get automatically activated with each Window reboot, Gift Card Giveaway Scam virus makes vicious entries in boot section and changes its default settings. However, this activity brings several pernicious issues such as boot errors, software failure, application malfunctioning, hard drive crash and so on. This nasty adware displays fake update alerts stating that some of your important applications need to be updated instantly and then tries to deceive you into installing rogue software. This nasty PUP can be also responsible for the intrusion of many other Online infections in the machine as well since it is able to deactivate all the running security tools and open backdoors for them. And therefore, looking at all these hazards, you are highly advised to delete Gift Card Giveaway Scam virus from the computer as soon as possible.

Antimalware Details And User Guide

Click Here For Windows Click Here For Mac

Important Note: This malware asks you to enable the web browser notifications. So, before you go the manual removal process, execute these steps.

Google Chrome (PC)

• Go to right upper corner of the screen and click on three dots to open the Menu button
• Select “Settings”. Scroll the mouse downward to choose “Advanced” option
• Go to “Privacy and Security” section by scrolling downward and then select “Content settings” and then “Notification” option
• Find each suspicious URLs and click on three dots on the right side and choose “Block” or “Remove” option

Google Chrome (Android)

• Go to right upper corner of the screen and click on three dots to open the menu button and then click on “Settings”
• Scroll down further to click on “site settings” and then press on “notifications” option
• In the newly opened window, choose each suspicious URLs one by one
• In the permission section, select “notification” and “Off” the toggle button

Mozilla Firefox

• On the right corner of the screen, you will notice three dots which is the “Menu” button
• Select “Options” and choose “Privacy and Security” in the toolbar present in the left side of the screen
• Slowly scroll down and go to “Permission” section then choose “Settings” option next to “Notifications”
• In the newly opened window, select all the suspicious URLs. Click on the drop-down menu and select “Block”

Internet Explorer

• In the Internet Explorer window, select the Gear button present on the right corner
• Choose “Internet Options”
• Select “Privacy” tab and then “Settings” under the “Pop-up Blocker” section
• Select all the suspicious URLs one by one and click on the “Remove” option

Microsoft Edge

• Open the Microsoft Edge and click on the three dots on the right corner of the screen to open the menu
• Scroll down and select “Settings”
• Scroll down further to choose “view advanced settings”
• In the “Website Permission” option, click on “Manage” option
• Click on switch under every suspicious URL

Safari (Mac):

• On the upper right side corner, click on “Safari” and then select “Preferences”
• Go to “website” tab and then choose “Notification” section on the left pane
• Search for the suspicious URLs and choose “Deny” option for each one of them

Manual Steps to Remove Gift Card Giveaway Scam:

Remove the related items of Gift Card Giveaway Scam using Control-Panel

Windows 7 Users

Click “Start” (the windows logo at the bottom left corner of the desktop screen), select “Control Panel”. Locate the “Programs” and then followed by clicking on “Uninstall Program”

Windows XP Users

Click “Start” and then choose “Settings” and then click “Control Panel”. Search and click on “Add or Remove Program’ option

Windows 10 and 8 Users:

Go to the lower left corner of the screen and right-click. In the “Quick Access” menu, choose “Control Panel”. In the newly opened window, choose “Program and Features”

Mac OSX Users

Click on “Finder” option. Choose “Application” in the newly opened screen. In the “Application” folder, drag the app to “Trash”. Right click on the Trash icon and then click on “Empty Trash”.

In the uninstall programs window, search for the PUAs. Choose all the unwanted and suspicious entries and click on “Uninstall” or “Remove”.

After you uninstall all the potentially unwanted program causing Gift Card Giveaway Scam issues, scan your computer with an anti-malware tool for any remaining PUPs and PUAs or possible malware infection. To scan the PC, use the recommended the anti-malware tool.

How to Remove Adware (Gift Card Giveaway Scam) from Internet Browsers

Delete malicious add-ons and extensions from IE

Click on the gear icon at the top right corner of Internet Explorer. Select “Manage Add-ons”. Search for any recently installed plug-ins or add-ons and click on “Remove”.

Additional Option

If you still face issues related to Gift Card Giveaway Scam removal, you can reset the Internet Explorer to its default setting.

Windows XP users: Press on “Start” and click “Run”. In the newly opened window, type “inetcpl.cpl” and click on the “Advanced” tab and then press on “Reset”.

Windows Vista and Windows 7 Users: Press the Windows logo, type inetcpl.cpl in the start search box and press enter.  In the newly opened window, click on the “Advanced Tab” followed by “Reset” button.

For Windows 8 Users: Open IE and click on the “gear” icon. Choose “Internet Options”

Select the “Advanced” tab in the newly opened window

Press on “Reset” option

You have to press on the “Reset” button again to confirm that you really want to reset the IE

Remove Doubtful and Harmful Extension from Google Chrome

Go to menu of Google Chrome by pressing on three vertical dots and select on “More tools” and then “Extensions”. You can search for all the recently installed add-ons and remove all of them.

Optional Method

If the problems related to Gift Card Giveaway Scam still persists or you face any issue in removing, then it is advised that your reset the Google Chrome browse settings. Go to three dotted points at the top right corner and choose “Settings”. Scroll down bottom and click on “Advanced”.

At the bottom, notice the “Reset” option and click on it.

In the next opened window, confirm that you want to reset the Google Chrome settings by click on the “Reset” button.

Remove Gift Card Giveaway Scam plugins (including all other doubtful plug-ins) from Firefox Mozilla

Open the Firefox menu and select “Add-ons”. Click “Extensions”.  Select all the recently installed browser plug-ins.

Optional Method

If you face problems in Gift Card Giveaway Scam removal then you have the option to rese the settings of Mozilla Firefox.

Open the browser (Mozilla Firefox) and click on the “menu” and then click on “Help”.

Choose “Troubleshooting Information”

In the newly opened pop-up window, click “Refresh Firefox” button

The next step is to confirm that really want to reset the Mozilla Firefox settings to its default by clicking on “Refresh Firefox” button.

Remove Malicious Extension from Safari

Open the Safari and go to its “Menu” and select “Preferences”.

Click on the “Extension” and select all the recently installed “Extensions” and then click on “Uninstall”.

Optional Method

Open the “Safari” and go menu. In the drop-down menu, choose “Clear History and Website Data”.

In the newly opened window, select “All History” and then press on “Clear History” option.

Delete Gift Card Giveaway Scam (malicious add-ons) from Microsoft Edge

Open Microsoft Edge and go to three horizontal dot icons at the top right corner of the browser. Select all the recently installed extensions and right click on the mouse to “uninstall”

Optional Method

Open the browser (Microsoft Edge) and select “Settings”

Next steps is to click on “Choose what to clear” button

Click on “show more” and then select everything and then press on “Clear” button.

Conclusion

In most cases, the PUPs and adware gets inside the marked PC through unsafe freeware downloads. It is advised that you should only choose developers website only while downloading any kind of free applications.  Choose custom or advanced installation process so that you can trace the additional PUPs listed for installation along with the main program.