How to remove Onemacusa.com ads

Onemacusa.com asks users to click the “Allow” button to confirm they are human

Onemacusa.com is a bogus website that tricks people by disguising as a captcha verification.^[1] Upon visiting the site, users are asked to “verify” that they are not robots. But there is no box to tick or pictures to identify as a regular verification. Instead, it asks people to press the “Allow” button at the top, which is not on the website. It is a browser prompt that asks if people want to receive push notifications from the page, so they are not verifying that they are humans.

Pages like this often use this and other similar techniques to trick people because they do not have any content to provide. The scheme would not work if individuals would be honest and say that they want to earn money by showing random advertisements.

The creators do not care about your security or safety, so they do not check what is promoted and send pop-up ads from various sources. Some push notification ads might be created by fraudsters and lead to dangerous sites where they can be exploited and suffer from monetary losses or be tricked into downloading potentially unwanted programs or even malware.^[2]

Pop-up ads show up in intervals that the page creators have set them to, so they might not appear right after people click the “Allow” button. So they start showing up unexpectedly and seemingly out of nowhere. Often people think that they have been infected with a virus, but that is rarely true. 

Besides giving the site permission to send notifications, this could also be the activity of adware which is a program that generates ads in the background without the users' knowledge, causes redirects, and other annoying issues.

Social engineering techniques 

Onemacusa.com specifically uses the captcha verification process to trick users. And it works because most people are familiar with it. If people do not know all the different ways that legitimate websites can verify if visitors are real or not, they might think that this website is real and do not even think about it. But this is not the only message used by fraudsters; these are some of the other texts people can see that try to get them to click the button:

Download is ready. Click Allow to download your file
Click Allow to watch the video
Click Allow to verify your age

Besides these messages, you can see deceptive images, GIFs, and videos that make it look more believable. For example, the scheme works excellent if people are surfing through illegal streaming platforms – they are full of deceptive ads^[3] and sneaky redirects that open ads in new tabs. If people click on a play button to start the movie, a new tab might open and start playing the “movie,” but then it stops and a message appears saying you need to press the “Allow” button to continue watching.

Stop the intrusive pop-ups

Below you will find a manual guide on how to take care of your Chrome browser. Instructions for MS Edge, Chromium, Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Safari are available at the end of this post. Because push notifications are subscription-based, you will have to disable them yourself:

Remove unwanted notifications from Google Chrome (desktop):

1. Open Google Chrome browser and go to Menu > Settings.
2. Scroll down and click on Advanced.
3. Locate Privacy and security section and pick Site Settings > Notifications.
4. Look at the Allow section and look for a suspicious URL.
5. Click the three vertical dots next to it and pick Block. This should remove unwanted notifications from Google Chrome.

Remove unwanted notifications from Google Chrome (Android):

1. Open Google Chrome and tap on Settings (three vertical dots).
2. Select Notifications.
3. Scroll down to Sites section.
4. Locate the unwanted URL and toggle the button to the left (Off setting).

If blocking ads via browser settings worked for you, after that, we recommend taking care of your browser by clearing cookies and cache. They are used by almost every website to track your activity. Because you probably were browsing through shady sites, this step is essential. We also have an automatic solution for this if you do not want to do it yourself – FortectIntego.

Clear cache and web data from Chrome:

1. Click on Menu and pick Settings.
2. Under Privacy and security, select Clear browsing data.
3. Select Browsing history, Cookies, and other site data, as well as Cached images and files.
4. Click Clear data.

Remove adware from your system

If you notice an increased amount of commercial content like pop-ups, banners, surveys, and others, or you often get redirected to strange websites, you may have adware installed in your system. PUPs are most commonly spread on unofficial sites that distribute freeware.

Because the owners of these pages provide programs for free, they need to make money in other ways, so they include additional programs in the installers that perform tasks in the background.  People do not notice that other files were installed because they normally rush through the process and do not care about it.

If you want to avoid PUAs, you have to pay attention. Always choose “Custom” or “Advanced” installation methods and go through all the steps. The most important part is checking the file list and seeing if there is anything that you do not need. If you see them, just untick the boxes next to the names.

Because it is unclear which app could be causing the problems, we suggest using SpyHunterCombo Cleaner or MalwarebytesMalwarebytes anti-malware tools that can automatically scan your machine and eliminate it completely. If you know what you are doing and want to do it yourself, here are the directions for Windows and macOS:

Windows 10/8:

1. Enter Control Panel into Windows search box and hit Enter or click on the search result.
2. Under Programs, select Uninstall a program.
3. From the list, find the entry of the suspicious program.
4. Right-click on the application and select Uninstall.
5. If User Account Control shows up, click Yes.
6. Wait till uninstallation process is complete and click OK.

Windows 7/XP:

1. Click on Windows Start > Control Panel located on the right pane (if you are Windows XP user, click on Add/Remove Programs).
2. In Control Panel, select Programs > Uninstall a program.
3. Pick the unwanted application by clicking on it once.
4. At the top, click Uninstall/Change.
5. In the confirmation prompt, pick Yes.
6. Click OK once the removal process is finished.

Mac:

1. From the menu bar, select Go > Applications.
2. In the Applications folder, look for all related entries.
3. Click on the app and drag it to Trash (or right-click and pick Move to Trash)

To entirely remove an unwanted app, you need to access Application Support, LaunchAgents, and LaunchDaemons folders and delete relevant files:

1. Select Go > Go to Folder.
2. Enter /Library/Application Support and click Go or press Enter.
3. In the Application Support folder, look for any suspicious entries and then delete them.
4. Now enter /Library/LaunchAgents and /Library/LaunchDaemons folders the same way and terminate all the related .plist files.