Remove Defense-mob Pop-up Virus — How to Remove?

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Defense-mob pop-up notifications may show up out of the blue, covering the content of the website you checked or opening your browser when you do not need it to be opened.

Clicking the Defense-mob promotion can result in the injection of various malware or unwanted programs. In this guide, you will see the manual of Defense-mob popups clearing in multiple methods, and also checking your system for additional viruses presence.

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What are Defense-mob pop-ups?

Defense-mob popups are a consequence of adware presence. Adware is a kind of malware that shows you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which generates a large volume of earnings for adware suppliers. These advertisements might include explicit composition, or have a link to malevolent content/website, considering that adware maintainers have no reason to check the goodness of the material they are going to show – their solitary target is money.

Defense-mob push notification

Defense-mob push notification.

Pop-up advertising itself is an excellent, low-priced and really productive advertising method1. It enables the seller to link the buyers’ interest to their site, as well as the buyers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they intend to buy. When the consumer will get a pop-up alert that the TV set he wishes to purchase is available at the online store he/she visited previously with a 15% price cut, one will undoubtedly use this opportunity and get it. Taking into consideration the incredibly small cost for the popups and their targeting, such a promotion and marketing instrument is a favorite thing among the marketing teams of big online stores.

Nevertheless, such a rewarding scheme could not be missed by malware developers. Potential to demonstrate the popup ads by force to the people of malware attack is a great basis for evil-minded adjustments with the popup ads. And Defense-mob.com advertisements is among hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a details for the Defense-mob site
Site Defense-mob.com
Hosting AS59253 Leaseweb Asia Pacific pte. ltd.
Singapore, Singapore
Infection Type Adware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address 23.106.248.15
Symptoms Annoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behavior Music, Captcha4you, Balneasoucars
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Defense-mob virus?

There are a huge amount of ways of becoming contaminated by the adware that create the Defense-mob popups tornado. A lion’s part of this computer virus incidents is after the free software or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Freeware can also be downloaded from the main website, and the adware is presented as a legit bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A plenty of people oftentimes use the uncertain programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, various tools that are free of cost, and even hacked programs. All of these sorts of applications are dangerous, due to the fact that it is extremely easy to build in a Defense-mob malware under the guise of part of the license hacking script, or as a component of the self-made algoritm inside of the Windows optimization tool.

Defense-mob popup malware may likewise be concealed in the advertisement somewhere on the odd site. Such sites are in most cases packed with intense and blinking advertisements, and their proprietors typically accept any type of promos to be placed on their web page. Thus, clicking on such banners is a shot in the dark: only the ad contractor realizes what will occur when you press this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you can additionally get something a lot more risky, like ransomware or coin miner; the large share of coin miners distribution is exactly after the malicious ads.

People dislike popups

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

Potentially unwanted programs, like Defense-mob pop-up virus may initiate a wide range of problems on your computer. Distracting is not the only problem – pop-up notifications can show you the ads, where you are offered to get one more dubious program, or “a perfect anti-malware tool”. Scareware is often distributed under the last slogun. Potentially unwanted applications, in turn, can have spyware functions. And it is very hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a normal one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and pseudo antiviruses, popup-related banners are also chosen as a spreading method by different trojan viruses, for instance – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such viruses is 100% unwanted, and can cost you several hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not interacting with these ads, they can be clicked by someone who also makes use of your computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the situation may become much more serious, and it will be much harder to deal with it without data and money loss. It is recommended to wipe out the viruses with anti-malware applications as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Defense-mob pop-up advertisements?

The guide of Defense-mob adware removal contains 2 sections. First, we need to exterminate the malware, and then fix the consequences of its activity. The elimination process is pretty easy, because it may be performed even with the use of Microsoft Defender – anti-malware software that is present on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nonetheless, due to its large resources utilization, along with some problems that can be crucial for some groups of users, Defender is oftentimes turned off by the users, so its utilization is likely impossible. Moreover, a variety of trojan viruses are able to switch off the embedded antivirus. It is far better to make use of the separated program that will not have such vulnerabilities.

I would certainly suggest you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven antivirus tool that will undoubtedly remove the viruses from your PC and also make an invulnerable shield with a Proactive protection function. But let’s manage Defense-mob adware initially.

Removing Defense-mob 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 Defense-mob 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 browsers are reset, you need to ensure that your browser will connect the appropriate DNS while connecting to the web page you want. Make a text file named “hosts” on your pc’s desktop, then open it and fill it with the following lines3:

# 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 issue that makes things a lot more difficult to repair, specifically without the anti-malware program. The majority of adware versions that are utilized to show you the Defense-mob pop-up ads are changing the deep browser setups, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to fix your browser settings after your computer was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly crash quickly. Sometimes, you will see no crash, but huge lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 seconds, and afterwards it will be back to the typical, till you try to open settings once more.

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 Defense-mob Pop-ups?

Name: Defense-mob

Description: Defense-mob - 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 Defense-mob.com push notifications?” or “why do Defense-mob.com pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Defense-mob 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 overview and the reasons why I advise it for malware elimination.
  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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