Kissanime virus: is it safe? What its sites do now and how to remove the ads

What the Kissanime name means today

"Kissanime virus" is not one program. Kissanime was a website for watching anime for free, and the "virus" people mean is the ads, pop-ups and redirects of that site and of the many copies that took its name. A visit does not install anything by itself; what you accept afterwards (a prompt, a download, an "update") is what can stay on your device.

What it was

A website that listed anime episodes to watch online for free, with large amounts of third-party advertising, as the three pictures from our guide show

The original

Wikipedia gives 14 August 2020 as the date KissAnime was dissolved; our 2023 guide says the original site was shut down because of copyright infringement

Since then

Copies and look-alike addresses under other endings (.ru, .ca, .cc, .io, .mx, .to and more). They are separate addresses; nothing we found shows that they belong together or to the original owners

Our test, 6 October 2026

Of seven addresses we tried, none showed an anime list. Three handed the browser on to other sites (a betting site, a job portal's campaign page and a casino promotion), and four did not load at all

Official site

None that we could find. If a page says it is the official Kissanime, treat it as one more copy

So the useful questions are not "which virus is it" but "what did the page ask me to accept" and "what is in my browser that was not there before". The sections below answer both: our test of the addresses, what the old pictures show, the real risks, and the steps if you clicked something.

Kissanime misspellings, viruses and the Top Gear question

The odd spellings in these searches are most likely typing slips for Kissanime.

Several swap a letter for its neighbour on the keyboard, such as n and b or w and e. We found no separate site or program behind these spellings, so this is our reading, and everything in this guide applies to them too.

Does Kissanime have viruses? The sites are not a virus, and visiting one installs no program by itself. The danger sits in what the ads around them offer, such as notification prompts or files you are told to download. In our test on 6 October 2026 kissanime.cc only passed the browser on through ad addresses to a betting page.

Top Gear Kissanime is a query we cannot explain with a source. Top Gear is a British motoring show, not anime, and we found no reliable page showing it on any Kissanime site. Our test showed no streaming at all. A copy that promises Top Gear episodes is most likely using the name as bait for clicks, and nothing it asks you to install is needed.

A mistyped address can land on a lookalike site that someone else registered, so the safest habit is to avoid typing such names into the address bar. Use a bookmark of a service you trust instead. If a page you reached by a misspelling asked you to allow notifications or run a file, follow the cleanup steps earlier in this guide.

Our test on 6 October 2026

We opened each address the way a visitor does: a clean desktop Chromium browser in Lithuania, no extension, no account, one visit, nothing clicked and nothing downloaded. None of them was an anime site. The one that responded most like the old Kissanime, kissanime.cc, sent the browser through a chain of ad addresses to a betting site.

The same test on six other addresses with the Kissanime name gave a different picture each time, which is what a family of unrelated copies looks like.

Five more spellings (kissanime.com, .cx, .vc, .sk and .live) returned no address in our lookup. A page that does not load today can come back, and a page that redirects today can behave differently tomorrow, so this table is a snapshot, not a verdict on the names.

What we know about the Kissanime sites over the years

1. 2015–2016

   Some of today's addresses are registered

   The registry records show kissanime.to registered on 29 October 2015 and kissanime.ca on 17 September 2016. A registration date says only when the name was first taken; the name may have changed hands since.

2. Our guide's pictures

   Kissanime pages with heavy advertising

   In the picture from our guide, a page at kissanime.co lists anime, framed by large game banners, a dating ad and a charity ad, with a cookie policy box open at the bottom that says Google and other third parties use cookies to serve ads based on earlier visits. A second window is loading behind it.

   

3. Our guide's pictures

   A new tab full of ads

   The second picture shows the same site and, in front of it, a second tab titled "Loading...." that has opened on an unrelated address ending in indexRCC.html, filled with a grid of sponsored articles about diets, gold and trading. Opening a tab you did not ask for is the pop-up behaviour the old guide meant.

   

4. Our guide's pictures

   A copy at kissanime.ai, with video ads

   The third picture, used at the top of this guide, shows a copy of the site under another ending, kissanime.ai, with an episode list, game banners at the sides and a dark video ad overlay in the lower right with the message that you can skip the ad in 2 seconds.

5. 14 August 2020

   The original site closes

   Wikipedia gives 14 August 2020 as the day KissAnime was dissolved, and our guide says it was shut down because of copyright infringement. Copies under other addresses kept the name.

6. 7 June 2023

   Our guide: the copies as an adware problem

   We published our earlier guide on the subject. It quoted users on Reddit and elsewhere who described a new tab telling them to add an add-on to the browser, many dialogue boxes, and a download that started without a click that an antivirus program detected. We have not re-read those posts, so they are reported here as quoted, not as our own finding.

7. 6 October 2026

   Our test: redirects and dead addresses

   No tested address showed an anime list. Three redirected to other sites and four did not load; see the table above.

The real risks, from most to least serious

The harm from a site like this comes from what you accept after landing on it, not from the page opening. Our 2023 guide said you could be infected by browsing alone; we saw no sign of that on our visits, and we explain below what we corrected.

• High

  Running a player, "update" or add-on offered by the page or an ad

  The old picture of a new tab and the reader quotes both describe a page telling people to add an add-on or start a download. A program or browser extension you accept can be adware or worse, and once it is on the machine it can open pages you never chose, record what you click and bring in more files. Files that look like PDF converters, system optimizers or other handy programs are the usual disguise.

• High

  Free programs and files from piracy-style sites

  Anything fetched from peer-to-peer and streaming sites is unchecked by anyone. Hackers dress bogus programs up as something harmless, and adware can also hide in the installer of an ordinary program. This is called bundling: extra programs are ticked by default in the setup, and a quick install with the Quick or Recommended option installs them without telling you.

• Medium

  Clicking Allow on a notification request

  One click lets that address send ads to your desktop until you take the permission back. Our 2023 guide noted that people often see the ads because they accepted push notifications by accident. In Chrome and Edge the notices can arrive with the window closed, because both keep running in the background by default.

• Medium

  Ads and redirects to scam, gambling or fake pages

  Our 2023 guide said the ads can lead to technical-support scam, phishing or spoofing pages. The ads are chosen by networks, not by the site, so nobody on the site controls where they lead; our one visit ended on a gambling page. Some destinations are harmless, some are not. A password or card number typed on a fake one is lost, and a phone number called from a fake alert is a scam call.

• Medium

  Personal details typed into the site or an ad

  Some such sites and ads ask for an e-mail address, a date of birth or a card number. What you type can be sold, used for targeted ads or used for identity theft. Our 2023 guide listed sensitive data exposure, money loss, identity theft and further infections as the possible consequences; they come from what is given away, not from a page opening.

• Low

  Drive-by downloads

  Our 2023 guide said that even clicking on an empty space of the page could start a download and install a virus without any action. A drive-by download needs a flaw in an out-of-date browser or plug-in, and a modern, updated browser blocks downloads that start without your action. We did not see it on our visits, so we cannot confirm it, and we do not rule it out for a browser that is years out of date; an up-to-date browser is the defence.

• Low

  Copyright

  Full-length anime on such sites is normally not licensed by its makers. Our 2023 guide said that illegal streaming can lead to fines and even jail; how the law treats the viewer differs from country to country and we are not lawyers, so we give no figure. A licensed source avoids the question.

What you see (continual redirects to a Kissanime-named address, pop-ups, flashing windows, slower browsing, unexpected dialogue boxes, automatic downloads) points to adware or a browser extension you did not choose, not to a single named virus. A bogus pop-up on its own is not an infection; it is a page, and closing it ends it.

The same applies to torrents: the files are not checked by anyone, and malware can sit in a download that looks like a film or an episode. Free is paid for somewhere, usually with your attention or your computer.