Remove Folowme.biz Virus — How to Fix Guide

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

Clicking on the Folowme.biz advertisement may result in the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this article, you will see the guideline of Folowme.biz popups removal in several methods, as well as examining your personal computer for extra viruses existence.

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What are Folowme.biz pop-ups?

Folowme.biz popups are a consequence of adware activity. Adware is a kind of malware that presents you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click promotions, which creates a large volume of revenue for adware distributors. These promotions might include sometimes shocking material, or have a web link to malevolent content/website, because adware maintainers have no reason to inspect the goodness of the material they are going to show – their solitary target is money.

Folowme.biz push notification

Folowme.biz push notification.

Pop-up promotions itself is a very good, low-priced and also extremely efficient marketing instrument1. It makes it possible for the vendor to link the customers’ interest to their website, as well as the buyers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they want to purchase. When the consumer will get a pop-up notification that the TV set he desires to buy is provided at the online shop he/she visited earlier with a 15% price cut, one will surely use this opportunity and get it. Considering the very low cost for the popups and their targeting, such a marketing instrument is a much-loved thing amidst the advertising teams of big online retailers.

However, such a rewarding scheme could not be missed by malware creators. Potential to demonstrate the popup ads forcibly to the people of malware invasion is a great basis for malevolent adjustments with the popup promotions. And Folowme.biz promotions is just one of hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a summary for the Folowme.biz site
SiteFolowme.biz
HostingAS14061 DigitalOcean, LLC
Netherlands, Amsterdam
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address134.209.136.174
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorEyouagain, Thankyouf, Onterralink
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Folowme.biz virus?

There are a huge amount of ways of getting contaminated by the adware that trigger the Folowme.biz popups tornado. A lion’s part of this computer virus incidents is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Freeware may additionally be downloaded from the main website, and the adware is supplied as a legal bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A plenty of users regularly work with the unreliable programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, a wide range of apps that are free, or perhaps hacked programs. Every one of these sorts of programs are dangerous, due to the fact that it is very easy to include a Folowme.biz 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.

Folowme.biz popup malware can additionally be concealed in the advertisement somewhere on the odd website. Such web pages are generally full of bright and blinking advertisements, and their owners often approve any kind of promos to be published on their page. Hence, clicking on such banners is a shot in the dark: only the ad contractor realizes what will happen when you press this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you may also get something much more risky, like ransomware or coin miner; the large share of coin miners circulation is exactly after the malicious advertisements.

People dislike popups

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

Potentially undesirable applications, like Folowme.biz pop-up virus may initiate a lot of different problems on your computer. Distracting is not the only problem – pop-ups can show you the banners, where you are offered to download one more dubious application, or “a amazing anti-malware tool”. Scareware is often distributed with the use of the last slogun. Potentially unwanted applications, in turn, can have spyware functionality. And it is quite hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a normal one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and fake antiviruses, popup-related banners are also chosen as a distribution way by different 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 promotions, they may be clicked by whoever who also makes use of your personal computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the situation may become much more serious, and it will be much harder to solve it without information loss. It is recommended to remove the viruses with anti-malware applications as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Folowme.biz pop-up advertisements?

The guide of Folowme.biz adware elimination consists of 2 sections. Initially, we need to deal with the malware, and then take care of the effects of its action. The removal process is very simple, because it may be done even with making use of Microsoft Defender – security tool that is available on all computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, because of its large resources utilization, along with some bugs that can be pivotal for some categories of users, Defender is oftentimes turned off by the users, so its use is probably impossible. In addition, different trojan viruses are able to shut off the embedded antivirus. It is far better to make use of the separated program that will not have such exposures.

I’d recommend you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven security tool that will definitely erase the viruses from your personal computer and make an impenetrable cover with a Proactive protection feature. But let’s manage Folowme.biz adware initially.

Removing Folowme.biz 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 Folowme.biz 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 web browser will be connected the appropriate DNS while connecting to the web page you want. Make a text file named “hosts” on your computer’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 trouble that makes the things much harder to repair, specifically without the anti-malware program. A lot of adware versions that are utilized to show you the Folowme.biz pop-up advertisements are modifying the deep browser settings, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to fix your browser settings after your system was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly collapse soon. In certain cases, you will see no crash, but 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 attempt 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.

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 Folowme.biz Pop-ups?

Name: Folowme.biz

Description: Folowme.biz - 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 Folowme.biz push notifications?” or “why do Folowme.biz pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Folowme.biz 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 overview and also the reasons why I recommend 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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