How to remove Moatads.com

What is Moatads.com

Moatads.com (z.moatads.com) is a type of infection that acts as browser hijackers. The biggest change affected by such programs is browser appearance. Once opened, you may see the new search engine and widgets like weather and fast links to popular platforms. Moatads.com, however, imitates the website of Moat, which is a legitimate marketing tool developed to measure Analytics of Youtube, Facebook, and Twitter as well. It helps people cultivate personal brands by generating ads to boost the user’s activity on different platforms. Moatads.com has no relationship with the legitimate service. It can use hijacked settings to record valuable data and send it to cybercriminals. This is why we recommend you delete the browser hijacker unless you want your data to slip away. Scroll down the guide below to find removal instructions.

How Moatads.com infected your computer

Browser hijackers that replicate capabilities of legitimate programs usually get installed via bundled software. This can be seen on shady pages that offer a bunch of cracked or pirated programs for free. When users download such, they risk themselves catching an unwanted infection like adware or browser hijackers. In order to dodge these consequences, you should be patient and check additional sections like “Advanced” or “Custom” during the installation process. Otherwise, if you leave them untouched, your PC will suffer a potentially unwanted program. Unfortunately, there is no single way to ensure a virus-free experience. For this, you should be careful, use only trusted resources, and download official files. We have gathered a list of tips to protect your device from unwanted behavior similar to what we described in this post.

1. Download Moatads.com Removal Tool
2. Stop Moatads.com notifications in browsers
3. Remove/Uninstall Moatads.com from Control Panel and Applications
4. Remove Moatads.com extensions from browsers
5. Reset browser search and homepage settings
6. Block Moatads.com search redirects
7. How to protect from threats like Moatads.com

Remove Moatads.com manually for free

Here is the manual step-by-step tutorial for full Moatads.com removal from your computer. This works 99% and was checked with the latest versions of the Moatads.com installer on operating systems with the latest updates and browser versions.

Disable push notifications from Moatads.com in browsers

Remove Moatads.com from websites, allowed to show push-notifications in Google Chrome

1. Go to Google Chrome settings, by clicking 3-dots icon in the top-right corner and choosing Settings.
2. On a Mac you can also go to Chrome and choose Preferences.
3. Under opened Privacy and security tab, choose Content settings.
4. Click on Notifications menu (with the bell icon).
5. Set up preferred overall settings for push notifications and click Manage exceptions… button.
6. Find Moatads.com in the list and click cross icon to remove it. Click Done button to confirm the action.

Remove Moatads.com from websites, allowed to show push-notifications in Mozilla Firefox

1. Go to Mozilla Firefox options, by clicking 3-bars icon in the top-right corner and choosing Options.
2. Choose Content tab on the left side.
3. Under Notifications, set up preferred overall settings for push-notifications and click Choose… button.
4. Find Moatads.com in the list and click Remove site to remove it.
5. Click Save Changes button to confirm the action.

Remove Moatads.com from websites, allowed to show push-notifications in Safari

1. Open Safari, and in the top menu click Safari, choose Preferences.
2. In the Preferences window, click on Websites tab.
3. On the left side, choose Notifications. You will see the list of websites and their settings for showing notifications.
4. Find Moatads.com in the list and click Remove button.

Remove Moatads.com from websites, allowed to show push-notifications in Android (Chrome)

1. Open Google Chrome app on Android, and tap on three dots to open main menu.
2. In the drop-down menu choose Settings, scroll down and under Advanced section tap on Site Settings.
3. In the Site Settings menu tap on Notifications.
4. In the Allowed list of websites allowed to show notifications find Moatads.com, tap on it and in the bottom of the window tap on Clean & Reset button.
5. Confirm your action by tapping on Clean & Reset again in opened dialog box.

Remove Moatads.com from websites, allowed to show push-notifications in Microsoft Edge

1. Open Microsoft Edge, and click on the three-dots menu, in the top-right corner.
2. In the drop-down menu choose Settings, and in the left part click Advanced.
3. Under Website permissions section, click Manage permissions button.
4. Find Moatads.com in the list and click on the cross sign to remove the setting and disable its notifications.

Remove Moatads.com from Control Panel or Applications

To start removing Moatads.com you should uninstall it using Control Panel. It can be present by different names – “Moatads.com”. It should uninstall correctly, however, we recommend you to use IObit Uninstaller to clean leftover items after uninstalling. Here are instructions for Windows XP, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10 and Mac.

Remove Moatads.com from Mac:

1. In the Finder sidebar, click Applications.
2. Moatads.com might have an Uninstaller.
3. Otherwise, drag Moatads.com from the Applications folder to the Trash (located at the end of the Dock).
4. Then choose Finder > Empty Trash.

Remove Moatads.com from Windows XP:

1. Click on Start button.
2. Choose Control Panel.
3. Click Add or Remove Programs.
4. Find recently installed suspicious program.
5. Click Uninstall.

Remove Moatads.com from Windows 7:

1. Click Start button.
2. Then go to Control Panel.
3. Click Uninstall a Program.
4. Find recently installed suspicious program and click Uninstall.

Remove Moatads.com from Windows 8:

1. Hover mouse pointer to the bottom-right corner to see Menu.
2. Click Search.
3. After that click Apps.
4. Then Control Panel.
5. Click Uninstall a Program under Programs.
6. Find recently installed suspicious program, click Uninstall.

Remove Moatads.com from Windows 10:

There are 2 ways to uninstall Moatads.com from Windows 10

Way one

1. Click on the Start button.
2. In opened menu choose Settings.
3. Click on the System tile.
4. Click Apps & features and locate recently installed suspicious program in the list.
5. Click on it and then click Uninstall button near it.

Way two (classic)

1. Right-click on the Start button.
2. In opened menu choose Programs and Features.
3. Locate recently installed suspicious program in the list.
4. Click on it and then click Uninstall button above.

Cannot uninstall Moatads.com

In some cases, Moatads.com won’t uninstall and gives you a message that “You do not have sufficient access to uninstall Moatads.com. Please, contact your system administrator” when you try to remove it from Control Panel or “Access denied” error when removing the Moatads.com folder and files. This happens because the process or service does not allow you to do it. In this case, I will recommend you to use SpyHunter 5 or Malwarebytes or uninstall Moatads.com in Safe Mode. To boot in Safe Mode do the following:

1. Reboot your computer.
2. While it starts booting press F8 button.
3. This will open Advanced Boot Options menu.
4. Choose Safe Mode and wait until Windows loads.
5. Go to Control Panel > Uninstall a program and remove recently installed suspicious program

>> See detailed instructions and video tutorial on how to boot in Safe Mode

and for Mac:

If you can’t uninstall Moatads.com using instructions above, or it keeps coming back, you can use free AppCleaner for Mac to remove all residual data and libraries of Moatads.com. Follow instructions below:

1. Download free AppCleaner.
2. Drag Moatads.com from Applications folder to AppCleaner window.
3. Choose files and folders you want to remove along with Moatads.com.
4. Click Delete button.

Remove malicious add-ons from your browsers

Uninstalling Moatads.com from Control Panel often does not bring the desired effect. It sometimes has browser extension and it may still be active in Safari, Google Chrome, and Mozilla Firefox. Here are instructions on how to remove Moatads.com related extension from your browsers manually.

Safari:

1. Start Safari on your Mac, click Safari to open drop-down menu and choose Preferences
2. Click Extensions tab.
3. Find Moatads.com extension.
4. Click Uninstall button to remove it.

Google Chrome:

1. Start Google Chrome browser
2. In address box type (or copy-paste) chrome://extensions.
3. Find Moatads.com related extension.
4. Click the trash can icon to remove them.
5. Also remove other suspicious extensions from the list.

Mozilla Firefox:

1. Start Mozilla Firefox browser.
2. In address box type (or copy-paste) about:addons.
3. Choose Moatads.com related extension.
4. Click Disable or Remove button.
5. Remove all suspicious extensions from the list.

Internet Explorer (9, 10, 11):

Note: There is no feature to remove browser extensions from browser in latest version of Internet Explorer. To remove Moatads.com from Internet Explorer, please, perform instructions for uninstalling program from Control Panel. To disable Moatads.com, please, do the following:

1. Open Internet Explorer.
2. Click on gear/asterisk icon in the top-right corner.
3. In opened menu Manage Add-ons.
4. Select Toolbars and Extensions.
5. Click Disable or Moatads.com related extension.
6. Also disable other suspicious extensions from the list.

Opera Browser:

Generally, Moatads.com does not install in Opera browser however you can always double check. Do the following:

1. Start Opera browser.
2. Go to Tools > Extensions > Manage Extensions.
3. Find Moatads.com extension.
4. Click Uninstall button.
5. Also remove other suspicious extensions from the list.

Reset browsers settings (homepage, default search)

Moatads.com installs a search engine that hijacks your browsers. Here is an instruction to reset your browser’s homepage, new tab and search engine to default values.

Reset Safari:

1. Start Safari on your Mac, click Safari to open drop-down menu and choose Preferences
2. Go to the Privacy section of Safari’s preferences.
3. Click Remove All Website Data button.
4. In opened window click Remove Now button to remove data stored by websites in Safari.
5. Go to the Advanced section of Safari’s preferences.
6. Click the Show Develop menu in menu bar option.
7. In the menu click Develop and select Empty Caches from this menu.
8. Again, go to Safari menu and choose Clear History….
9. Choose to clear all history and click Clear History button.

Google Chrome:

1. Start Google Chrome browser
2. In address box type (or copy-paste) chrome://settings.
3. Scroll down and find Show advanced settings link.
4. Click on it and scroll down to the bottom again.
5. Click Reset browser settings button and click Reset to confirm.

Mozilla Firefox:

1. Start Mozilla Firefox browser.
2. In address box type (or copy-paste) about:support.
3. Click Reset Firefox… button.
4. Click Reset Firefox to confirm.

Internet Explorer (9, 10, 11):

1. Start Internet Explorer.
2. Click on gear/asterisk icon in the top-right corner.
3. In opened menu choose Internet options.
4. Click Advanced tab.
5. Click Reset button.
6. Choose Delete personal settings and click Reset.

Opera Browser:

1. Close Opera and open command prompt from the start menu.
2. Type following command del %AppData%\Opera\Opera\operaprefs.ini
3. Start Opera.

How to block ads and pop-ups from Moatads.com

Moatads.com push notifications, in most cases, are caused by a program installed on your PC or add-on installed in browsers. However, sometimes it can appear on a clean computer when visiting a malicious website, using an advertising script. Also, apps that generate “Moatads.com” ads and banners are themselves installed from pop-ups. To protect your PC and browsers from phishing websites, pop-up ads, banners, malicious scripts it is recommended to use AdGuard. Download free trial here:

Download AdGuard for Windows

Download AdGuard for Mac

Final tips

Be careful surfing the internet and downloading software, as programs, like Moatads.com, may become a real headache as they are hard to remove and break your privacy. To keep safe from such threats we recommend you always use antivirus and one of the anti-malware programs available on the market. One of the best anti-spyware and anti-malware programs is SpyHunter 5. It can protect your PC from threats, like Moatads.com.