How to remove You’ve Made The 9.68-Billionth Search POP-UP Scam

“You’ve Made The 9.68-Billionth Search” POP-UP Scam is just another version of a very common scam that claims you have won a prize for making a lucky search, in this case, the “9.68-billionth”. Supposedly, this giveaway is hosted by Google and it rewards every 10 millionth search. If it isn’t clear yet, this is nothing more than a scam.

 

 

You’ve Made The 9.68-Billionth Search POP-UP Scam is a very generic scam that makes false promises about supposed prizes you have won simply because you made a lucky search. This kind of scam has been around for many years and judging from the numerous posts on various forums, some users still fall for them. If they were to do a Google search of the “You have won” pop-ups they encounter, they would get plenty of results that reveal it’s a scam. None of these giveaways are ever legitimate, they’re merely after users’ data.

The whole point of these scams is to collect users’ personal information, and in some cases, get the money that users pay for the supposed shipping of their prizes. Scams like You’ve Made The 9.68-Billionth Search usually pop up when users are browsing high-risk websites, such as those that have pornography content. In some cases, adware could also trigger the redirects. Because it may be difficult to tell whether it’s the sites you visit or adware that’s the issue, we recommend that you scan your computer with anti-virus software, such as WiperSoft. It would delete You’ve Made The 9.68-Billionth Search POP-UP Scam adware with no issue.

Why are you being redirected to these scams?

Dealing with these kinds of redirects on a regular basis can get quite annoying because they interrupt your regular browsing. So it’s important that you get to the bottom of what’s causing them. One of the most common reasons is browsing high-risk websites. Certain sites, such as those that have pornography or pirated content, have pretty questionable ads on them, and engaging with any kind of content on them can often trigger redirects. To prevent this from happening, it’s a good idea to install an adblocker program that would deal with these ads. It’s also recommended to be more cautious when visiting high-risk websites.

However, if you’re redirected constantly, even when browsing safe sites, you may be dealing with an adware infection. It’s not a particularly serious infection, more of an annoyance than actually dangerous. Adware, as well as other infections like browser hijackers, install via software bundling, meaning they come attached to free software as extra offers. Those offers are permitted to install alongside automatically unless users manually stop them. Many users do not do that simply because they are not aware of the offers in the first place, as they’re initially hidden. This happens when users use Default settings when installing free programs.

To correctly install freeware and be able to deselect the extra offers, you need to choose Advanced (Custom) settings. Those settings will allow you to review everything that has been added, as well as deselect the offers you do not want. All you really need to do is uncheck the boxes. It takes seconds to do this and will save you a lot of time and effort when you don’t need to remove pesky infections from the computer. Keep in mind that the majority of free programs you download from unofficial websites will come with these offers so you always need to be attentive.

Pop-up giveaway alerts are never legitimate

These kinds of scams are incredibly common, and while they’re all more or less the same, there are variations. This particular scam claims that you made the “9.68-billionth search” and uses the standard Google scam template, with just the number of searches different. The scam claims that Google gives away rewards every 10 million searches, and it is implied that only 9.68 billion searches have been made. In reality, it is estimated that Google processes 63,000 search queries every second, which means there are approximately 5.6 billion searches made per day. Considering that Google has certainly been around for longer than two days, the numbers in the scam pop-up aren’t even realistic.

The scam asks that users pick from the three concealed prizes. Whichever one is uncovered, it will likely display an expensive tech device, such as an iPhone. If you scroll down, there will be fake testimonies of previous winners, all who supposedly won these prizes because they made the lucky searches. If you continue to engage with the scam, you would be asked to provide your personal information, including your full name, home address, email address, and phone number. In some cases, you may even be asked to pay a small fee for the supposed shipping. This information and the small fee are the main targets of these scams. The information collected during these scams may not seem particularly valuable but it can be used to perform more sophisticated scams in the future. The data is usually sold on various hacker forums.

Most users who regularly browse the Internet will have encountered these kinds of scams before. For more inexperienced users, they may even seem legitimate. However, every single one of these giveaway pop-ups will be fake. Companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc., will not host giveaways this way. If there was one, it would be announced via legitimate channels, such as official social media accounts.

“You’ve Made The 9.68-Billionth Search” POP-UP Scam removal

Depending on why you’re redirected to sites that display this and similar kinds of scams, you may need to scan your computer with anti-virus software. A security program like WiperSoft would detect and remove “You’ve Made The 9.68-Billionth Search” POP-UP Scam causing adware, thus stopping the redirects. Adware can be pretty persistent, making manual removal sometimes difficult.

It’s also possible that you are redirected to these types of sites by the high-risk websites you visit. If that’s the case, installing an adblocker program would help as it would stop the redirects altogether or at least close the windows as they pop up. An adblocker is very useful in general because it greatly minimizes the number of ads you see.