How to remove Free-notification pop-ups? — Fix Guide

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Free-notification pop-up notices can appear unexpectedly, covering the content of the site you checked or opening your web browser when you do not wish it to be opened.

Clicking on the Free-notification ad may cause the injection of different malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the guideline of Free-notification popups clearing in various manners, and also examining your system for additional viruses presence.

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What are Free-notification pop-ups?

Quick reference

advertising

advertising

It’s hard to compare the amount of marketing budgets that you can afford to send. For example, when it comes to the price of a TV in US and 3 European outlets, the same can be said for ad budgets. The only way to avoid those expenses is to spend money directly on the ad, rather than trying to make the money back on the ad.

When you do get those ad budgets but start working on your brand you might find that they do not make enough sense for your new business. If you’re looking for a niche with a large presence in the market in which you can attract, then consider buying a brand that you can grow a solid core in.

advertising

Selling yourself

I will tell you how different marketing budgets look like at one time.

Free-notification 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 major amount of earnings for adware distributors. These advertisements may include explicit composition, or have a web link to malevolent content/website, since adware maintainers have no reason to check the goodness of the web content they are going to reveal – their single target is money.

Free-notification push notification

Free-notification push notification.

Pop-up advertising itself is a good, low-cost and also very efficient marketing method1. It permits the vendor to link the buyers’ interest to their website, and the customers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they wish to purchase. When the customer will get a pop-up notification that the TV set he wishes to buy is available at the online store he/she saw previously with a 15% price cut, one will surely use this chance and purchase it. Considering the extremely small cost for the popups and their targeting, such a promotion and marketing method is a favourite thing among the advertising departments of huge internet retail stores.

Nonetheless, such a profitable strategy could not be missed by malware creators. Ability to show the popup advertisements by force to the people of malware invasion is a perfect basis for malevolent tricks with the popup advertisements. And Free-notification.work advertisements is just one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a summary for the Free-notification
Site Free-notification.work
Hosting AS14061 DigitalOcean, LLC
Netherlands, Amsterdam
Infection Type Adware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address 178.62.225.201
Symptoms Annoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behavior Yofdifferents, Eandtellmey, Games
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Free-notification virus?

There are a huge amount of methods of becoming contaminated by the adware that cause the Free-notification popups tornado. A lion’s part of this malware cases is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Free software may likewise be downloaded from the main web page, and the adware is offered as a legitimate bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A number of users regularly work with the uncertain programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, different utilities that are free of cost, and even hacked programs. All of these sorts of software are dangerous, because it is extremely simple to include a Free-notification malware under the cover of part of the license hacking script, or as a part of the self-made algoritm inside of the Windows optimization tool.

Free-notification popup virus can likewise be concealed in the promotion somewhere on the strange site. Such sites are typically loaded with colorful and blinking advertisements, and their proprietors generally accept any type of promotions to be published on their web page. Thus, clicking such banners is a shot in the dark: only the ad provider knows what will happen when you press this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you may additionally get something far more damaging, 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 undesirable applications, like Free-notification pop-up virus can initiate a variety of different problems on your personal computer. Distracting is not the only problem – pop-up notifications may show you the banners, where you are offered to get another strange program, or “a amazing security tool”. Scareware is usually spread under the last slogun. Potentially undesirable programs, in turn, can have spyware functionality. And it is quite hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a normal one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and dubious antiviruses, popup-related advertisements are also chosen as a spreading method by different trojan viruses, for instance – coin miners. The consequences of actions of such malware is 100% unpleasant, and can cost you hundreds or even thousands of dollars. And even if you are not clicking these ads, they can be clicked by someone who also uses your personal computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the things may become much more serious, and it will be much harder to solve it without data and money loss. It is recommended to remove the viruses with anti-malware programs as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Free-notification pop-up advertisements?

The guide of Free-notification adware removal consists of 2 sections. First, we need to deal with the malware, and then fix the consequences of its action. The elimination process is really simple, since it can be done even with using Microsoft Defender – anti-virus program that is available on all computers with Windows 8/10. However, as a result of its huge resources utilization, as well as some defects that can be pivotal for some kinds of individuals, Defender is often disabled by the users, so its usage is likely impossible. What’s more, different trojan viruses are capable to turn off the embedded antivirus. It is 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 anti-malware tool that will undoubtedly remove the viruses from your computer and make an impenetrable cover with a Proactive protection feature. However, let’s handle Free-notification adware initially.

Removing Free-notification 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 Free-notification 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 connect the right DNS while connecting to the site you want. Make a text file titled “hosts” on your computer’s desktop, after that 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.

Nevertheless, there is one problem that makes the things much harder to restore, especially without the anti-malware software. Most of adware variations that are utilized to show you the Free-notification pop-up advertisements are altering the deep browser setups, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to change your browser settings after your machine was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly collapse quickly. Sometimes, you will see no crash, but huge lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 secs, and afterwards it will be back to the normal, until you try 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 Free-notification Pop-ups?

Name: Free-notification

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