Remove Fortifyshield Pop-up Virus — How to Remove?

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Fortifyshield pop-up notifications may appear out of the blue, covering the subject of the site you explored or opening your web browser when you don’t wish it to be opened.

Clicking the Fortifyshield ad may cause the injection of various malware or unwanted programs. In this guide, you will see the guideline of Fortifyshield popups clearing in various ways, and also checking your personal computer for extra malware presence.

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What are Fortifyshield pop-ups?

Fortifyshield popups are a result of adware presence. Adware is a type of malware that demonstrates to you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which produces a large volume of income for adware distributors. These promotions might include sometimes shocking content, or have a web link to malicious content/website, considering that adware maintainers have no reason to check the goodness of the material they are going to reveal – their solitary target is cash.

Fortifyshield push notification

Fortifyshield push notification.

Pop-up marketing itself is a very good, cheap and also extremely productive marketing instrument1. It makes it possible for the vendor to link the buyers’ interest to their website, and the customers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they wish to purchase. When the consumer will receive a pop-up alert that the TV set he desires to purchase is available at the online store he/she checked out earlier with a 15% discount, one will certainly use this possibility and buy it. Taking into consideration the very small cost for the popups and their targeting, such a promotion and marketing instrument is a favorite thing among the marketing teams of huge online sellers.

However, such a profitable system could not be missed by malware creators. Ability to demonstrate the popup advertisements forcibly to the targets of malware invasion is a perfect basis for evil-minded manipulations with the popup advertisements. And Fortifyshield.com advertisements is just one of hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a short summary for the Fortifyshield site
SiteFortifyshield.com
HostingAS13335 Cloudflare, Inc.
United States, San Francisco
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address172.67.206.109
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorNews, Ndandinte, Cepundal
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Fortifyshield virus?

There are a number of methods of getting contaminated by the adware that result in the Fortifyshield popups storm. A lion’s part of this malware cases is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Free software may likewise be downloaded from the official site, and the adware is delivered as a legit bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A huge amount of users regularly make use of the dubious programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, various tools that are free, and even hacked programs. Every one of these sorts of software are risky, because it is quite easy to include a Fortifyshield malware under the cover of part of the license hacking script, or as a part of the self-made algoritm within the Windows optimization tool.

Fortifyshield popup virus can additionally be hidden in the advertisement somewhere on the strange site. Such websites are generally loaded with colorful and blinking advertisements, and their owners usually permit any promos to be placed on their page. Therefore, clicking on such banners is a risky thing: only the ad provider realizes what will happen when you press this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you can likewise receive something far more unsafe, like ransomware or coin miner; the big 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 unwanted programs, like Fortifyshield pop-up virus may initiate a wide range of problems on your computer. Distracting is not the only effect – pop-up notifications may show you the promotions, where you are offered to get another dubious program, or “a effective security tool”. Scareware is often distributed with the last motto. Potentially unwanted applications, in turn, may have spyware functions. And it is very hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a good one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and fake antiviruses, popup-related promotions are also used as a distribution way by different trojan viruses, for instance – coin miners. The consequences of actions of such viruses is 100% unpleasant, and can cost you hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not clicking these banners, they may be clicked by someone who also uses your personal computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the things can become much more serious, and it will be much harder to deal with it without data loss. It is recommended to get rid of the viruses with anti-malware applications as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Fortifyshield pop-up advertisements?

The manual of Fortifyshield adware removal consists of 2 parts. First, we need to deal with the malware, and then deal with the results of its action. The removal process is very easy, due to the fact that it may be executed even with the use of Microsoft Defender – anti-malware software that is available on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nonetheless, as a result of its significant resources usage, along with some defects that can be crucial for some categories of users, Defender is often disabled by the users, so its utilization is most likely impossible. Additionally, various trojan viruses can switch off the embedded antivirus. It is far better to make use of the separated program that will not have such exposures.

I would certainly suggest you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven antivirus device that will surely eliminate the viruses from your PC and create an impenetrable cover with a Proactive protection function. However, let’s deal with Fortifyshield adware first.

Removing Fortifyshield 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 Fortifyshield 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 definitely be connected the proper DNS while connecting to the site you need. Create a text file titled “hosts” on your pc’s 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 problem that makes the things a lot harder to repair, particularly without the anti-malware program. Most of adware versions that are utilized to show you the Fortifyshield pop-up promotions are changing the deep browser setups, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to fix your browser settings after your machine was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly collapse quickly. Sometimes, you will see no crash, but large lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 seconds, and afterwards it will be back to the typical, until 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 Fortifyshield Pop-ups?

Name: Fortifyshield

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