Visual Deals popup spam masquerading as a Pinterest Button?
This isn’t my usual humor post but, as a web designer and host, I spend approximately 23 billion hours of unpaid time a year (give or take an hour) removing viruses and malware and spam from servers, web sites and my own computer. I am so sick of spam that when I find it and destroy it, I want to spread the word.
I was recently visiting my own web store when a little “Visual Deals” bubble popped up right on the page, pushing cheap dog jewelry ON MY STORE.
I lost my mind. I assumed either my web site had been hacked or my computer had caught a virus. Was everyone seeing this? Were people coming to my store to buy things and then being taken away to some other store by this evil thing?
Visual Deals Spam Hides in Chrome Extensions
I did a Google search for “Visual Deals” and only found one thread. In it, people talked about how they’d discovered this Visual Deals crap was part of two Google Chrome extensions, Translate Selection and Chrome Reload – neither of which I had.
I turned off all my Chrome extensions by going up to the little three slash symbol in the upper right of my browser and then to “Settings” and then choosing the Extensions tab. Sure enough, Visual Deals disappeared. I turned them back on, one at a time, and discovered the culprit was my Pinterest Button extension! What?! Why would a big, popular company like Pinterest embed their button with cheesy Visual Deals popups?
I was about to write an angry email to Pinterest and flambe them for putting spam in their add-on, when I realized there were several Pinterest button options at the Chrome store and I had downloaded the wrong one.
Here’s a picture of my extensions – can you tell which is the button by Pinterest and which is a total piece of Visual Deals laden crap?
Answer: Visual Deals is in the second one.
Below is the evil one AT the Chrome store. I discovered that the “From extension.feedback@gmail.com” was the author of the other extensions people complained about as well. People all through the comments/reviews on this extension give it one star and talk about how evil it is, and yet it still has almost as high a rating as the REAL Pinterest button because the evil pieces of shit who made it filled it with bogus positive ratings.
It does say that it comes with “ads to support development” on the side, but I’m afraid many people will overlook that because they think everything with “Pinterest” on it must be from Pinterest.
So there you have it. If you’re seeing Visual Deals or other junk, check your browser extensions. I’m sure they’ve mimicked all kinds of things in the hopes of tricking people into their ads. Assholes.
PS: I bet eventually someone will leave a comment on this post talking about how they LOVE this extensions and Visual Deals is helpful finding deals. Uh huh. Riiiight.
PPS: Here’s the link for the OFFICIAL Pinterest button: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/pinterest/gpdjojdkbbmdfjfahjcgigfpmkopogic
It looks like the Google App store finally got wise and removed the evil one!
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Thank you for explaining the Visual Deals popup crud. I too, had searched on Google for this thing, and didn’t have much luck.
Thank you again!!
YOU ARE AN ANGEL SENT FROM HEAVEN!!!! Oh my gosh that is so sneaky! I could not figure out where the ads were coming from and it was TOTALLY the pinterest button! Thank you SO much!
Thank you for the helpful information.
Many, many thanks for this. I was searching for a translate extension which I didn’t have. BUT I did have the wrong Pinterest button. Big sigh. I am SO delighted to be rid of that other thing.
Many thanks for this quick solution! You saved me from having to disable all my extensions and go through them one by one.
THANK YOU SO MUCH!
I DID disable all my extensions one by one — TWICE.
I kept thinking I had gotten rid of visualdeals, but it kept popping back up. It never occurred to me, though, to disable the Pinterest extension, because like everyone I assumed that Google wouldn’t allow a rando company to use a major brand’s name like that. Can’t believe I was that gullible!
THANK YOU! I had exactly the same problem and ended up on the whirlpool forum where they explained about the translation extension – which of course I didn’t have. I only have about 4 extensions and I thought they were all legit. Anyhoo – removed the Pinterest add-on and voila! problem solved.
What an annoying little popup that was…
Thanks for this, it was driving me crazy. It first showed up on Amazon and I thought it was a change that they had made. I have pinned it.
Thanks so much!
THANK YOU!! I had the wrong Pinterest extension installed, too.
Thanks very much for posting this helpful info! Fixed it for me. Cheers
Lionel
Omg THANK YOU! I’ve been trying to figure out where these horrid visual deals ads were coming from for the past week and you’re the first person to mention the evil Pinterest extension. Good eye!
Oh wow. Thank you SO much for explaining this. I thought I was losing my mind when this silly thing started popping up everywhere I visited on the web. Was driving me crazy! You just saved me a lot of aggravation trying to figure this out =)
Just wanted to say a big thank you!!! I would’ve never suspected my pinterest button!
Thanks so much for posting this, I was wondering where the Visual Deals pop-up box came from. Like some of the others have mentioned, I would have never guess it was the Pin on Pinterest button.
Thank you so much for this post! I had the exact same experience as you and I was worried about malware. Yuck.
I just got a new computer last week and that was when I started seeing the crazy Visual Deals pop-up. It has made it very annoying when I’m shopping but thank to your easy instructions I was able to disable it and get the correct 1.1 version of Pinterest. Thank you!!
Your post showed up when I googled visual deals. Thank you very much for clearing up my problem.
Thank you, thank you, thank you!!! I could not figure out how to get rid of that darn thing. So happy it is gone now and I can browse in peace.
OH THANK YOU. It’s been bugging me and it’s so annoying I want to throw my laptop across the room. Sure enough, it was the pinterest button for me too. Sheesh.
I loved your article and absolutely hate that Visual Deals “hijacks” the web-sites I visit. So I followed your directions. I checked my Settings > Extensions and it looked like I had Pinterest 6.5 but I deleted it anyway and closed Chrome. I reopened it and went back to online shopping and it got hijacked again. Grrr. I went into Settings > Extensions and clicked the garbage can next to Pinterest, and WHOA I got a new page with the statement that if I wanted to change Visual Deals, hit the Change button (on that new page) and it gave me the option to Enable or Disable Visual Deals. Duh, I disabled it, of course. I closed/opened Chrome again, returned to the web-site to shop and sure enough Visual Deals was gone. 2 things : 1) Google’s willingness to “fix” this either shows their concern for their browser or Google is in bed with Visual Deals. 2) You and a lot of other people must have made enough noise that Google “fixed” the problem. Thank you.
I’m really disappointed that there have been several apps by this group and yet Google keeps them in their app store. They’re clearly crap. I think (and I could be wrong) that the solution you found to disable that bit was always there, (though I’d love to take credit.) I would suggest removing that extension completely though, because it is still evil.
It looks like maybe google removed the bad one. The good one is here: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/pinterest/gpdjojdkbbmdfjfahjcgigfpmkopogic
if you want to be sure you have the official one!
Thank you so much! It’s been driving me crazy!
THANK YOU!!!!!! I was seeing ads on CRAIG’S LIST! I thought they’d sold out or something. A million thanks.
THANK YOU!!
Thank you SO much for this post! I looked under extensions, but was looking for a “visual deals” extension and found nothing. It’s so hard to find the real Pinterest extension in Chrome web store. Thanks for your help!
THANK YOU!!!!
Thank goodness for people like you who post and explain how to get rid of these evil annoying popups! Your information was great and now I am Visual Deals free!
Thank you soooooooo much!! Best post on how to remove those “Visual Deal” ads. I had seen posts tell users to remove an extension called Visual Deals. None showed up in my extension list so I knew that wasn’t the culprit. Sure enough, you were 100% right… I had added the “evil” pinterest extension!!!
thank you!!! It was driving me nutty! God bless!
Thank you soooo much! This has been making me crazy for weeks! 🙂
THANK YOU!!! This was SO HELPFUL =D
This is my first ever comment on a blog because THANK YOU!!!!!!! I had tried to remove it before to no avail and had given up, but when I was getting a visual deals popup on ADMINISTRATIVE REGULATIONS that I was trying to print, that was the last straw. Thankfully your blog popped up in my search and saved me from destroying my computer. Thanks again! (also had the evil Pinterest extension)
And here’s another big THANK YOU to you! I hate visual deals, they’re not even smart deals and they really piss me off when I’m shopping online. This is helpful!
Thank you SOOOO much!!
Thank you so, so much for this!! I couldn’t figure out how to make those stupid ads go away! They just blended into my webpages, I would accidentally click them all the stinking time and I HATED them. I also had the wrong Pinterest extension, I tried what you suggested and no problems since. You rock!
Thank you for this, much appreciated!
Thank you so much! I couldn’t figure this out. I kept seeing stuff that told me to remove “Web Layers” from extensions in Google Chrome, but I didn’t HAVE “Web Layers!” In seeing your post and looking at my Pinterest extension, I realized I had the ‘evil’ one! Thanks again for helping me diagnose this issue and remove the annoying “Explore” pop ups!!!
thank you so much, that was driving me mad, slowing everything up,
Thank you!! Visual deals BLOWS and I couldn’t figure out how to remove it, so thank you, thank you, thank you!
Thank you so much for sharing this information! I’ve had that Pinterest button for several months, but it just started doing the Visual Deals crap about a week ago. It was driving me crazy… so annoying! Thanks again!!
Thank you so much for this post. So informative, and your instructions were so easy to follow!
Thanks! thought my site had been hacked, and this took care of it.
Thanks Amy. Mine wasn’t Pinterest but was another extension but by slowly disabling the extensions I was able to figure out which one it was. I knew it was Chrome related because it wasn’t happening in Internet Explorer. Thanks again!
Thank you. When these started popping up AND appeared to be part of chrome I thought my head would explode. You have saved me!!!!!
Yeah thank you so much, it’s been several days i was beeing crazy about this ch*** !
Thank you so MUCH!!! Very helpful x
Thank you for saving me! I had the same experience as you! So annoying that the crap extension comes up as the first choice when adding it!
THANK YOU! 🙂
Thank you!! I fought with this same s**t with many different computers but never realised it’s my beloved Pinterest add-on that betrayed me. Now I’ve cleaned up my extensions and no more Visual Deals crap. As a web ad producer I DO NOT approve this kind of trickery.
THANK YOU!! That crap was driving me nuts!!
THANK you!!!!!
THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!!! I’ve been trying to get rid of visual ads for months and it wasn’t until i read your blog that it finally worked!
YOU ARE SO AWESOME!!!! I have been trying to figure this out forever with zero luck. I was just trying to do the “look inside” thing for a book I wanted to buy on Amazon but I couldn’t see it because of that stupid Visual Deals scanner thing. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Consider me a new fan of your blog. Not just for this awesome tip, but because I have six kids under age 10 and could use a little escapism. 🙂
Welcome – glad I could help!
Wow, I never knew extensions could be so dangerous. I don’t even use Pinterest, but had installed that button when playing around with the computer one day. The “visual deals” have been driving me crazy. Thank you so much for sorting this out. I uninstalled all the extensions I don’t regularly use.
Thank You
Thank you! They caught me too and it was driving me nuts!!
Love that your post was my top google search result for this problem! Thank you!
Many thanks to you for this quick easy and correct solution! I have been very frustrated by this!
Thank you so much for this, it was driving me crazy!
THANK YOU x 1000!!! I was about to lose my mind!
Thank you so much!!!!! I was LOSING MY MIND trying to get rid of this Visual Deals thing!!!! You are my hero!
THANK YOU!! You are a life saver! I removed my Pinterest extension so hopefully it will stop popping up for me. It’s so annoying!
THANK YOU!!!! Thank you, thank you, thank you, THANK YOU!!!
omg, thank you, thank you, thank you. this has been driving me crazy for months.
A huge thank you for figuring this out!!!! The instructions were perfect. I am so happy to have finally removed this extension from Chrome. So annoying!!! I’m just glad that I no longer have to deal with these pop ups. Very much appreciate it and THANKS again!
Thank you thank you thank you! At LAST!
Thank you!!! That was driving me insane! I had shut it down somehow at one point, but then I recently saw it again…finally gone!
I discovered this same thing — could NOT figure out why every time I used Chrome, I got all these popups, but when I was using Firefox I didn’t have them. So I reset Chrome. Then a few hours later, I wanted to pin something and I added the Pin button. Suddenly I was getting ads again…I knew it had to be the Pin button. Googled “Chrome spam pin it button” and up you came! I was getting ready to blame Pinterest — I know they’re trying to figure out how to monetize — so I’m glad I found this!
Thanks Amy!! This has been driving me crazy.
Thank you!!!! This has been driving me bonkers for far too long.
Glad to have found your thread!
Seriously cannot thank you enough!! I was losing my mind. You have helped me regain normalcy. Thank you!
Thank you for this post! 🙂
Thank you. Searched “visual deals spam” and you came right to the top! I wish people could use their creativity for something worthwhile.
Thank you, thank you, thank you. Visual deals gone!
Thank you so much for this article! That stupid visual deals ad has been driving me crazy and you made it so easy to solve. You also perfectly articulated my hatred for it, too. You’re the best!
Thanks so much – that has been driving me freakin nuts!
Thank you so much!!! I was wondering why I had 2 Pinterest extensions lol. Those ads were always so annoying and that pisses me off even more that they would trick people like that. Those shit stains. So happy to get rid of it!
Thank you, thank you, thank you! Visual Deals is the MOST annoying, stupid, obnoxious, horrible, no good, very bad crap! So happy to now have it removed.
Thank you so much!
Just wanted you to know this was the only thing I could find to help me get rid of those Visual Deals. I was ready to throw the computer out the window. Thank you so much.
I don’t use Chrome. I use Firefox, and I don’t have a Pinterest extention. Any way to disable this horrible pop-up for me? I am totally stumped!
Thank you SO MUCH!! I couldn’t figure out where the popup was coming from. I I never clicked on any of their ‘helpful’ offers, but actually found it really annoying because it got in the way of whatever I was trying to look at.
Thanks so much for this post! I looked in my extensions, trashed the Pinterest 6.5 version and am FREE of those annoying ads!
Oh my goodness, this has been driving me batty for ages. Thank you.
Thank you thank you thank you!
Thank you SO much! It has been driving me crazy as well….
I don’t have the pinterest app, and had this. I only had 2 enabled, my last pass app which I’ve had forever…and adblock super. I replaced that just now with adblock plus, so we will see if that works!