How to remove Adriftstressful.com pop-ups? — Fix Guide

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Adriftstressful.com pop-up notices can appear out of the blue, covering the post of the site you explored or opening your web browser when you don’t desire it to be opened.

Clicking on the Adriftstressful.com ad may trigger the injection of various malware or unwanted programs. In this guide, you will see the guideline of Adriftstressful.com popups clearing in a couple of ways, as well as checking your system for extra malware existence.

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What are Adriftstressful.com pop-ups?

Adriftstressful.com popups are a result of adware action. Adware is a sort of malware that shows you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click promotions, which generates a substantial volume of revenue for adware representatives. These ads may include explicit information, or have a link to malevolent content/website, because adware maintainers have no purpose to examine the goodness of the material they are going to reveal – their solitary target is money.

Adriftstressful.com push notification

Adriftstressful.com push notification.

Pop-up promotions itself is a good, low-cost and very effective advertising method1. It makes it possible for the vendor to attach the customers’ interest to their website, and the customers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they want to purchase. When the customer will receive a pop-up alert that the TV set he desires to purchase is available at the online shop he/she visited previously with a 15% price cut, one will undoubtedly use this possibility and get it. Taking into consideration the extremely low price for the popups and their targeting, such a promotion and marketing tool is a favorite thing amidst the marketing departments of huge internet retailers.

Nonetheless, such a successful scheme could not be missed by virus creators. Option to show the popup ads by force to the targets of malware attack is a perfect basis for evil-minded tricks with the popup ads. And Adriftstressful.com advertisements is one of hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a details for the Adriftstressful.com site
SiteAdriftstressful.com
HostingAS39572 DataWeb Global Group B.V.
United States, Washington
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address192.243.59.12
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorAchingmercury, Abortmaydesirable, Abashcoppercocky
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Adriftstressful.com virus?

There are a huge amount of ways of becoming infected by the adware that create the Adriftstressful.com popups tornado. A lion’s part of this malware incidents is after the free software or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Free software can additionally be downloaded from the official website, and the adware is offered as a legit bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A huge amount of users frequently utilize the unreliable programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, different tools that are free, and even hacked programs. Every one of these types of applications are risky, because it is quite easy to build in a Adriftstressful.com malware under the guise of part of the license hacking script, or as a component of the self-made algoritm within the Windows optimization tool.

Adriftstressful.com popup virus can additionally be concealed in the advertisement somewhere on the strange site. Such websites are in most cases loaded with intense and blinking advertisements, and their owners often permit any promotions to be posted on their web page. For this reason, clicking on such banners is a shot in the dark: only the advertisement contractor knows what will occur when you click this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you may also get something a lot more risky, like ransomware or coin miner; the substantial share of coin miners distribution is exactly after the malicious promotions.

People dislike popups

The statistic shows that people dislike popup advertising more than other types of promotions

Potentially undesirable programs, like Adriftstressful.com pop-up virus may initiate a variety of different troubles on your personal computer. Distracting is not the single effect – pop-up notifications may present you the ads, where you are offered to get one more unknown application, or “a amazing anti-malware tool”. Scareware is often distributed with the use of the last slogun. Potentially undesirable programs, in turn, may have spyware functions. And it is quite hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a normal one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and fake antiviruses, popup-related promotions are also used as a spreading method by various trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of actions of such viruses is 100% unwanted, and can cost you hundreds or even thousands of dollars. And even if you are not clicking these advertisements, they may be clicked by whoever who also makes use of your PC – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the situation can become much more serious, and it will be much harder to deal with it without information loss. It is recommended to wipe out the viruses with antivirus applications as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Adriftstressful.com pop-up advertisements?

The tutorial of Adriftstressful.com adware elimination includes 2 parts. Initially, we need to get rid of the malware, and after that deal with the results of its activity. The removal procedure is really easy, due to the fact that it can be executed even with the use of Microsoft Defender – anti-malware software that is present on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, because of its huge resources usage, along with some errors that may be critical for some groups of individuals, Defender is frequently disabled by the users, so its utilization is probably impossible. Additionally, different trojan viruses are capable to switch off the embedded antivirus. It is far better to use the separated program that will not have such exposures.

I’d advise you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven security device that will undoubtedly wipe out the malware from your personal computer and create an impenetrable cover with a Proactive protection function. However, let’s deal with Adriftstressful.com adware initially.

Removing Adriftstressful.com popup virus with GridinSoft Anti-Malware

  • Download and install GridinSoft Anti-Malware. After the installation, you will be offered to perform the Standard Scan. Approve this action.
  • Gridinsoft Anti-Malware during the scan process

  • Standard scan checks the logical disk where the system files are stored, together with the files of programs you have already installed. The scan lasts up to 6 minutes.
  • GridinSoft Anti-Malware scan results

  • When the scan is over, you may choose the action for each detected virus. For all files of Adriftstressful.com malware the default option is “Delete”. Press “Apply” to finish the malware removal.
  • GridinSoft Anti-Malware - After Cleaning

Now, when the computer is clean of viruses, we can proceed to the browser reset. You can do this step manually, as well as with the use of GridinSoft Anti-Malware.

Reset browser settings to default

Manual method of browser reset

To reset Edge, do the following steps :
  1. Open “Settings and more” tab in upper right corner, then find here “Settings” button. In the appeared menu, choose “Reset settings” option :
  2. Reseting the Edge browser

  3. After picking the Reset Settings option, you will see the following menu, stating about the settings which will be reverted to original :
For Mozilla Firefox, do the next actions :
  1. Open Menu tab (three strips in upper right corner) and click the “Help” button. In the appeared menu choose “troubleshooting information” :
  2. The first step to revert Mozilla Firefox

  3. In the next screen, find the “Refresh Firefox” option :
  4. The second step of Firefox restoration
    After choosing this option, you will see the next message :
    The last step for Firefox
If you use Google Chrome
  1. Open Settings tab, find the “Advanced” button. In the extended tab choose the “Reset and clean up” button :
  2. In the appeared list, click on the “Restore settings to their original defaults” :
  3. Finally, you will see the window, where you can see all the settings which will be reset to default :
Opera can be reset in the next way
  1. Open Settings menu by pressing the gear icon in the toolbar (left side of the browser window), then click “Advanced” option, and choose “Browser” button in the drop-down list. Scroll down, to the bottom of the settings menu. Find there “Restore settings to their original defaults” option :

  2. After clicking the “Restore settings…” button, you will see the window, where all settings, which will be reset, are shown :

When the web browsers are reset, you need to make sure that your web browser will definitely be connected the appropriate DNS while connecting to the site you need. Make a text file named “hosts” on your pc’s desktop, after that open it and fill it with the following text3:

# Copyright (c) 1993-2006 Microsoft Corp.
#
# This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows.
#
# This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each
# entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should
# be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name.
# The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one
# space.
#
# Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual
# lines or following the machine name denoted by a ‘#’ symbol.
#
# For example:
#
# 102.54.94.97 rhino.acme.com # source server
# 38.25.63.10 x.acme.com # x client host
# localhost name resolution is handle within DNS itself.
# 127.0.0.1 localhost
# ::1 localhost

Find the hosts.txt file in C:/Windows/System32/drivers/etc directory. Rename this file to “hosts.old.txt” (to distinguish it from the new one), and then move the file you created on the desktop to this folder. Remove the hosts.old from this folder. Now you have your hosts file as good as new.

However, there is one problem that makes the things much harder to restore, especially without the anti-malware program. A lot of adware variations that are utilized to show you the Adriftstressful.com pop-up advertisements are changing the deep browser settings, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to change your browser settings after your computer was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly crash quickly. In certain cases, you will see no crash, however, huge lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 seconds, and then it will be back to the normal, till you attempt to open settings one more time.

Reset your browser settings with GridinSoft Anti-Malware

To reset your browser with GridinSoft Anti-Malware, open the Tools tab, and click the “Reset browser settings” button.

Tools tab in GridinSoft Anti-Malware

You can see the list of the options for each browser. By default, they are set up in the manner which fits the majority of users. Press the “Reset” button (lower right corner). In a minute your browser will be as good as new.

Reset Browser Settings tab in GridinSoft Anti-Malware

The browser reset is recommended to perform through the antivirus tool by GridinSoft, because last is also able to reset the HOSTS file without any additional commands.

How to Remove Adriftstressful.com Pop-ups?

Name: Adriftstressful.com

Description: Adriftstressful.com - a lot of users became a target for the pop-up advertisements. I have a lot of friends who literally bombed me with the questions like “how to remove Adriftstressful.com push notifications?” or “why do Adriftstressful.com pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Adriftstressful.com pop-ups, which may corrupt your browser’s correct performance, and create a lot of troubles while you are working.

Operating System: Windows

Application Category: Adware

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References

  1. More about pop-up ads on Wikipedia.
  2. GridinSoft Anti-Malware review and also the reasons why I suggest it for malware removal.
  3. Official Microsoft guide for hosts file reset.

About the author

Wilbur Woodham

I was a technical writer from early in my career, and consider IT Security one of my foundational skills. I’m sharing my experience here, and I hope you find it useful.

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