"Today’s lucky visitor" Pop-ups - How to remove

“Today’s lucky visitor” is a call used by a bunch of online scams. These scams promise a prize to trick people to reveal their personal information. Pop-ups that greet you with “Today’s lucky visitor” are usually malicious websites that present unexpected contests, promotions, and giveaways, tell you that you won, and then ask you to fill out a form with your personal data. This way, “Today’s lucky visitor” pop-ups steal info and money from innocent people.

In short about “Today’s lucky visitor” pop-up scams:

Threats and dangers	Private information revealed to scammers, money lost.
Signs that “Today’s lucky visitor” pop-ups can’t be trusted	Spoofing popular sites, URLs that are unrelated to do with the spoofed site, urgency created to keep you stressed, no terms of service, fees required of you to pay for your own prize.
How to avoid scam ads	Block malicious sites and ads, remove malware (Combo Cleaner for Mac, SpyHunter for PC, Malwarebytes), use legal streaming services, recognize scams and don’t interact with them, report scams.
How to deal with “Today’s lucky visitor”	Report the scam, demand your money back, protect your credit card account.

What do “Today’s lucky visitor” sites look like?

“Today’s lucky visitor” pop-ups are webpages. There’s no one definitive look, but some common features exist.

Often, “Today’s lucky visitor” copies a trusted site’s look, such as Youtube.com, Amazon.com, or Facebook.com’s. These websites have very distinct color palettes and layouts. Most people really trust these sites not to scam them, so if a “Today’s lucky visitor” scammer does a good job, they can trick people into thinking that they’re on a trusted website, at least for a bit. This is called website spoofing and is also used by phishing scams and dubious investment schemes.

“Today’s lucky visitor” will often be propped up by fake comments. As the scam is about winning various prizes, the comment are there to make the whole thing more believable. These often use stolen photos (that you can find using reverse image search) and are not interactive. As in, you can’t reply, write your own comment, or open the profile of any of the commenters.

“Today’s lucky visitor” pop-ups come either as short surveys, a prize guessing/drawing game, or a straight-up giveaway. Even if it looks like random guessing, you always “win” something at the end. But to “receive your prize”, there’s always a lot of urgency: a timer ticking down, almost out-of-stock items… These things can make you nervous and leave you no time to look up the event or to consult anyone.

For the same reason – to keep you in the dark – “Today’s lucky visitor” pages have no privacy policy or terms of service. Normal sites tend to have those at the very bottom of the page. Now, there is a TOS link when “Today’s lucky visitor” redirects you when it’s time for you to hand over your personal data and money. But before that, the pop-up itself has no information. By the way, do read TOS in these situations. It can reveal various hidden fees and save you from unexpected problems.

Causes of the pop-ups

In general, “Today’s lucky visitor” pop-ups appear in your browser after you click on an ad or after you follow a link. A notification pop-up, a spam email, or a message in a social media site could also be responsible.

Ads for “Today’s lucky visitor”-type pop-ups usually infest pirating websites and other not-totally-legal sites. These sites allow all sorts of scammers and fraudsters to advertise on them. Sometimes the ads pop up randomly, without you even clicking on anything. Site developers can do that very easily.

Notification spammers that spread links to “Today’s lucky visitor” include sites like Secret-vip.club, Wpformb.com, and others. These sites have no content, they just trick you into allowing their notifications and then spam your browser with pop-up ads.

Adware viruses on your computer could be responsible for the “Today’s lucky visitor” ads, but that’s not necessarily the reason. Your device could be completely clean. Still, with how common some adware infections can be, such as the Shlayer Trojan, it’s a real danger that you should be aware of.

How to stop “Today’s lucky visitor” pop-ups

How to avoid the scam

If “Today’s lucky visitor” pop-ups are tormenting you regularly, here’s a small checklist of things to do:

• Check that no unwanted sites are sending you notifications. This article on web push notifications has some detailed instructions on how to check and stop them.
• Use an ad-blocker or an anti-malware program that has real-time web security. These should block at least some malicious ads and other bad websites.
• Scan your computer with an anti-malware program, such as Combo Cleaner for MacOS, SpyHunter for Windows, Malwarebytes, or another trusted tool.
• If this is relevant to you, look up legal alternatives to pirating. Many streaming services, online stores, and other convenient sites are available nowadays and they’re not nearly as dangerous to your online security as pirating is.
• Put any scam emails into the spam folder. Do not open these emails that tell you that you’ve won stuff. Your email spam filter should be trained to get rid of these for you, so mark them appropriately.
• Contact the owners of the website that was spreading “Today’s lucky visitor”. Give them the URL if you have it. They might care and ban this ad, saving other people from having to deal with it.

What to do after being scammed

What if you were sucked in by the scammers and gave away your information? The good news is that you probably didn’t get any malware from it. “Today’s lucky visitor” is a scam, not a trojan. But still, it’s very dangerous.

Did you pay any fees? Check your credit card account and see if there are any charges that you didn’t agree to. Some “Today’s lucky visitor” scams sign you up for unwanted services with monthly payments. You should be able to get your money back if you end the subscription and demand a refund in the first month, two weeks, or whatever period of time is set in your country.

You may have to ask for the help of your bank. Be honest with them about what happened and they should know the best way to protect your money.

You may want to report the scam in case your stolen identity is used for anything bad. Different countries have different agencies. For more information, here’s a link for the UK, one for Australia, and one for the USA.

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