Flintguard.top Ads Removal Guide — How to Fix It?

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Flintguard.top pop-up notifications may appear out of the blue, covering the subject of the page you went to or opening your web browser when you do not desire it to be opened.

Clicking the Flintguard.top promotion may lead to the injection of different malware or unwanted programs. In this article, you will see the tutorial of Flintguard.top popups removal in several methods, as well as examining your computer for additional malware presence.

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What are Flintguard.top pop-ups?

Flintguard.top popups are an effect of adware action. Adware is a type of malware that suggests you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click promotions, which generates a significant volume of profit for adware representatives. These ads might have sometimes shocking composition, or have a web link to harmful content/website, due to the fact that adware maintainers have no purpose to examine the goodness of the web content they are going to show – their solitary target is cash.

Flintguard.top push notification

Flintguard.top push notification.

Pop-up marketing itself is a good, affordable and also really successful advertising method1. It allows the vendor to attach the customers’ interest to their website, as well as the buyers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they intend to buy. When the customer will get a pop-up notification that the TV set he wishes to buy is provided at the online shop he/she saw earlier with a 15% price cut, one will undoubtedly use this opportunity and get it. Considering the very low price for the popups and their targeting, such a promotion and marketing instrument is a favourite thing amidst the advertising teams of huge online stores.

However, such a rewarding scheme could not be missed by virus creators. Ability to demonstrate the popup advertisements by force to the targets of malware invasion is an ideal basis for evil-minded manipulations with the popup promotions. And Flintguard.top ads is one of hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a details for the Flintguard.top
SiteFlintguard.top
HostingAS24940 Hetzner Online GmbH
Germany, Bamberg
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address116.202.184.109
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorTopcharts, Lamoptwell, Hicanymearry
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Flintguard.top virus?

There are a number of methods of getting contaminated by the adware that result in the Flintguard.top popups storm. A lion’s part of this malware instances is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Freeware may additionally be downloaded from the official site, and the adware is delivered as a legit bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A lot of people oftentimes make use of the dubious programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, various apps that are free of cost, or even hacked programs. Every one of these types of programs are dangerous, since it is very easy to build in a Flintguard.top malware under the guise of part of the license hacking script, or as a part of the self-made algoritm within the Windows optimization tool.

Flintguard.top popup malware may also be concealed in the ad somewhere on the odd web page. Such sites are typically full of colorful and blinking advertisements, and their owners usually approve any promos to be published on their page. Hence, clicking such banners is a shot in the dark: only the ad contractor knows what will happen when you press this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you may additionally get something far 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 unwanted programs, like Flintguard.top popup virus can provoke a wide range of troubles on your PC. Distracting is not the only problem – pop-ups can present you the advertisements, where you are offered to get another unknown application, or “a amazing anti-malware tool”. Scareware is often spread under the last motto. Potentially unwanted programs, in turn, can have spyware functionality. And it is pretty hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a legit one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and dubious antiviruses, popup-related promotions are also chosen as a spreading method by various trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of actions of such viruses is 100% unpleasant, and can cost you several hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not clicking these ads, they can be clicked by whoever who also makes use of your PC – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the things can become much more serious, and it will be much harder to solve it without data loss. It is recommended to eliminate the viruses with anti-malware applications as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Flintguard.top pop-up advertisements?

The tutorial of Flintguard.top adware removal contains 2 sections. First, we need to exterminate the malware, and then repair the results of its activity. The elimination process is quite easy, due to the fact that it can be performed even with the use of Microsoft Defender – security software that is available on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nonetheless, due to its significant resources usage, along with some problems that may be crucial for some types of users, Defender is frequently turned off by the users, so its usage is probably impossible. Furthermore, different trojan viruses can turn off the embedded antivirus. It is much better to make use of the separated program that will not have such weakness.

I would certainly recommend you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven anti-malware device that will definitely erase the malware from your computer and create an impenetrable shield with a Proactive protection feature. But let’s manage Flintguard.top adware first.

Removing Flintguard.top 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 Flintguard.top 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 make sure that your browser will definitely connect the correct DNS while connecting to the web page you want. Make a text file titled “hosts” on your desktop, after that open it and fill it with the following content3:

# 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.

Nevertheless, there is one issue that makes things much harder to repair, especially without the anti-malware program. A lot of adware versions that are used to show you the Flintguard.top pop-up ads are modifying the deep browser setups, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to fix your browser settings after your system was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly collapse quickly. In some cases, you will see no crash, however, huge lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 secs, and afterwards it will be back to the typical, up until 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 Flintguard.top Pop-ups?

Name: Flintguard.top

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

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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