Remove Alert-defenders Pop-up Virus — How to Remove?

Alert-defenders pop-up notices can appear out of the blue, covering the content of the site you checked or opening your web browser when you don’t desire it to be opened.

Clicking on the Alert-defenders advertisement may cause the injection of different malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the guideline of Alert-defenders popups clearing in a couple of methods, and also examining your PC for extra malware presence.

It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!

Removing Alert-defenders manually may take hours and may damage your PC in the process. I recommend you to download GridinSoft Anti-Malware for threats removal. Allows to complete scan and cure your PC during the trial period.

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What are Alert-defenders pop-ups?

Alert-defenders popups are an outcome of adware activity. Adware is a type of malware that demonstrates to you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which produces a massive volume of earnings for adware suppliers. These advertisements may have explicit content, or have a web link to malicious content/website, since adware maintainers have no purpose to check the goodness of the web content they are going to reveal – their solitary target is cash.

Alert-defenders push notification.

Pop-up advertising itself is an excellent, low-cost and also really productive advertising solution¹. It makes it possible for the vendor to link the customers’ attention to their site, and the buyers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they wish to buy. When the customer will receive a pop-up notification that the TV set he desires to buy is offered at the online shop he/she visited previously with a 15% price cut, one will undoubtedly use this chance and buy it. Taking into consideration the very small cost for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising and marketing method is a favourite thing among the marketing departments of big internet stores.

However, such a rewarding plan could not be missed by malware developers. Option to show the popup advertisements by force to the targets of malware attack is a perfect basis for malicious tricks with the popup promotions. And Alert-defenders.com promotions is among hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a details for the Alert-defenders site

How have I got the Alert-defenders virus?

There are a number of ways of becoming contaminated by the adware that cause the Alert-defenders popups storm. A lion’s part of this computer virus instances is after the free software or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Free software can also be downloaded from the main web page, and the adware is provided as a legal bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A number of individuals regularly utilize the uncertain programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, different apps that are free, or even hacked programs. All of these kinds of software are dangerous, due to the fact that it is very easy to integrate a Alert-defenders malware under the guise of part of the license hacking script, or as a part of the self-made algoritm inside of the Windows optimization tool.

Alert-defenders popup malware may additionally be concealed in the promotion somewhere on the strange website. Such websites are in most cases filled with colorful and blinking advertisements, and their proprietors usually accept any kind of promotions to be published on their web page. For this reason, clicking such banners is a shot in the dark: only the advertisement provider knows what will occur when you click this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you can additionally get something far more risky, like ransomware or coin miner; the substantial share of coin miners circulation is exactly after the malicious advertisements.

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

Potentially undesirable programs, like Alert-defenders pop-up virus may initiate a variety of different problems on your PC. Distracting is not the only problem – pop-up notifications can display you the banners, where you are offered to get another unknown program, or “a amazing anti-malware tool”. Scareware is usually distributed with the last slogun. Potentially unwanted applications, in turn, may have spyware functionality. And it is pretty hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a legit one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and pseudo antiviruses, popup-related ads are also chosen as a spreading way by various trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such malware is 100% unwanted, and can cost you hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not interacting with these banners, they may be clicked by someone who also uses your computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the things may become much more serious, and it will be much harder to solve it without data loss. It is recommended to eliminate the viruses with antivirus programs as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Alert-defenders pop-up advertisements?

The manual of Alert-defenders adware removal includes 2 parts. First, we need to get rid of the malware, and afterwards take care of the consequences of its action. The removal process is very simple, because it can be done even with the use of Microsoft Defender – anti-virus tool that is present on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. However, due to its substantial resources utilization, as well as some errors that can be critical for some kinds of individuals, Defender is frequently disabled by the users, so its use is likely impossible. In addition, different trojan viruses are able to shut off the embedded antivirus. It is much better to make use of the separated program that will not have such exposures.

I’d suggest you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware² – a well-proven security tool that will certainly remove the viruses from your personal computer and also make an impenetrable cover with a Proactive protection function. But let’s take care of Alert-defenders adware first.

Removing Alert-defenders 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.

• 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.

• When the scan is over, you may choose the action for each detected virus. For all files of Alert-defenders malware the default option is “Delete”. Press “Apply” to finish the malware removal.

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. 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. In the next screen, find the “Refresh Firefox” option :

After choosing this option, you will see the next message :

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 connect the accurate DNS while connecting to the site you need. Create a text file named “hosts” on your desktop, after that open it and fill it with the following content³:

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 issue that makes the things a lot harder to restore, especially without the anti-malware software. Most of adware variations that are utilized to show you the Alert-defenders pop-up promotions are adjusting the deep browser setups, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to change your browser settings after your machine was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will collapse quickly. In certain cases, you will see no crash, but significant lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 secs, and afterwards it will be back to the normal, till you try to open settings once again.

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.

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.

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 Alert-defenders Pop-ups?

Name: Alert-defenders

Description: Alert-defenders - 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 Alert-defenders.com push notifications?” or “why do Alert-defenders.com pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Alert-defenders 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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1. More about pop-up advertisements on Wikipedia.
2. GridinSoft Anti-Malware review and the reasons why I suggest it for malware elimination.
3. Official Microsoft guide for hosts file reset.