How to remove First-mirror pop-ups? — Fix Guide

Written by Wilbur Woodham
First-mirror pop-up notifications can show up unexpectedly, covering the material of the site you explored or opening your browser when you don’t wish it to be opened.

Clicking on the First-mirror promotion may trigger the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the tutorial of First-mirror popups clearing in a couple of ways, and also checking your computer for other viruses presence.

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What are First-mirror pop-ups?

First-mirror popups are a result of adware presence. Adware is a kind of malware that shows you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which produces a significant volume of earnings for adware suppliers. These promotions might have sometimes shocking content, or have a web link to malicious content/website, because adware maintainers have no reason to examine the goodness of the material they are going to show – their single target is money.

First-mirror push notification

First-mirror push notification.

Pop-up promotions itself is a good, low-cost and really productive advertising method1. It allows the seller to attach the customers’ interest to their website, as well as the buyers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they want to buy. When the person will get a pop-up alert that the TV set he desires to buy is offered at the online store he/she checked out previously with a 15% price cut, one will undoubtedly use this possibility and get it. Taking into consideration the very small cost for the popups and their targeting, such a promotion and marketing instrument is a much-loved thing amidst the advertising departments of big online retailers.

Nonetheless, such a rewarding scheme could not be missed by virus creators. Potential to show the popup advertisements forcibly to the targets of malware attack is a perfect basis for malicious adjustments with the popup advertisements. And First-mirror.com advertisements is just one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a details for the First-mirror
SiteFirst-mirror.com
HostingAS13335 Cloudflare, Inc.
United States, San Francisco
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address172.67.208.137
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorAfvdeukmy, News, Separashpar
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the First-mirror virus?

There are a number of ways of getting contaminated by the adware that trigger the First-mirror popups tornado. A lion’s part of this malware cases is after the free software or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Free software can also be downloaded from the main site, and the adware is supplied as a legitimate bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A lot of people oftentimes use the unreliable programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, various utilities that are free, or even hacked programs. All of these kinds of programs are unsafe, since it is quite easy to include a First-mirror malware under the cover of part of the license hacking script, or as a component of the self-made algoritm inside of the Windows optimization tool.

First-mirror popup malware can also be concealed in the ad somewhere on the odd site. Such web pages are usually full of intense and blinking advertisements, and their owners generally approve any type of promos to be published on their web page. Thus, clicking on such banners is a risky thing: only the advertisement provider knows what will happen when you click this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you may additionally get something a lot more hazardous, 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 First-mirror popup virus can cause a variety of troubles on your PC. Distracting is not the single problem – pop-ups can present you the ads, where you are offered to get another strange program, or “a effective anti-malware tool”. Scareware is usually distributed under the last motto. Potentially unwanted applications, in turn, can have spyware functionality. And it is pretty hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a normal one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and pseudo antiviruses, popup-related banners are also used as a spreading way by various trojan viruses, for instance – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such malware is 100% unpleasant, and can cost you several hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not interacting with these banners, they can be clicked by whoever who also makes use of your computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the things may become much more serious, and it will be much harder to deal with it without data loss. It is recommended to remove the viruses with anti-malware applications as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of First-mirror pop-up advertisements?

The manual of First-mirror adware clearing consists of 2 sections. Initially, we need to deal with the malware, and afterwards deal with the effects of its activity. The removal process is very easy, because it may be done even with making use of Microsoft Defender – security software that is available on all computers with Windows 8/10. Nonetheless, as a result of its large resources utilization, along with some defects that may be pivotal for some kinds of individuals, Defender is frequently turned off by the users, so its usage is most likely impossible. Additionally, various trojan viruses are capable to switch off the embedded antivirus. It is far better to make use of the separated program that will not have such weakness.

I’d recommend you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven security device that will definitely exterminate the malware from your system and create an invulnerable shield with a Proactive protection function. However, let’s take care of First-mirror adware initially.

Removing First-mirror 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 First-mirror 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 web browser will definitely connect the right DNS while connecting to the web page you want. Make a text file titled “hosts” on your pc’s desktop, then 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 issue that makes the things a lot more difficult to repair, especially without the anti-malware program. The majority of adware variations that are utilized to show you the First-mirror pop-up advertisements are changing the deep browser settings, 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 collapse soon. In certain cases, you will see no crash, however, large lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 secs, and afterwards it will be back to the typical, 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 First-mirror Pop-ups?

Name: First-mirror

Description: First-mirror - 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 First-mirror.com push notifications?” or “why do First-mirror.com pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with First-mirror 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 recommend 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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