How to remove Freenotifications pop-ups? — Fix Guide

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Freenotifications pop-up notices can appear unexpectedly, covering the content of the website you checked or opening your browser when you don’t desire it to be opened.

Clicking on the Freenotifications promotion may cause the injection of different malware or unwanted programs. In this article, you will see the manual of Freenotifications popups clearing in several manners, and also inspecting your computer for additional viruses presence.

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What are Freenotifications pop-ups?

Freenotifications popups are an effect of adware activity. Adware is a kind of malware that shows you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click promotions, which creates a large amount of profit for adware representatives. These advertisements may include sometimes shocking composition, or have a link to malevolent content/website, considering that adware maintainers have no reason to examine the goodness of the material they are going to show – their solitary target is cash.

Freenotifications push notification

Freenotifications push notification.

Pop-up advertising itself is an excellent, affordable and extremely efficient advertising instrument1. It makes it possible for the vendor to link the customers’ interest to their site, and the buyers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they wish to purchase. When the customer will receive a pop-up notification that the TV set he desires to buy is offered at the online shop he/she saw previously with a 15% price cut, one will undoubtedly use this opportunity and buy it. Considering the extremely low price for the popups and their targeting, such a promotion and marketing tool is a much-loved thing among the advertising departments of big online stores.

Nonetheless, such a successful strategy could not be missed by malware developers. Ability to demonstrate the popup advertisements forcibly to the people of malware attack is a perfect basis for malevolent manipulations with the popup promotions. And Freenotifications.com advertisements is just one of hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a short details for the Freenotifications site
Site Freenotifications.com
Hosting AS14618 Amazon.com, Inc.
United States, Ashburn
Infection Type Adware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address 3.234.191.239
Symptoms Annoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behavior Devicespam, News, Abetal
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Freenotifications virus?

There are a lot of ways of getting infected by the adware that trigger the Freenotifications popups tornado. A lion’s part of this malware cases is after the free software or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Freeware can additionally be downloaded from the official web page, and the adware is provided as a legitimate bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A plenty of users often utilize the uncertain programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, various tools that are free, or even hacked programs. Every one of these kinds of software are dangerous, because it is extremely simple to integrate a Freenotifications 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.

Freenotifications popup malware may also be hidden in the advertisement somewhere on the unusual website. Such websites are typically filled with colorful and blinking ads, and their proprietors typically approve any kind of promotions to be published on their page. Therefore, clicking such banners is a shot in the dark: only the advertisement provider knows what will occur when you click this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you can also get something much more risky, 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 undesirable applications, like Freenotifications pop-up virus may initiate a lot of different troubles on your personal computer. Distracting is not the only effect – pop-up notifications can show you the banners, where you are offered to download another strange program, or “a effective security tool”. Scareware is usually spread with the last motto. Potentially undesirable programs, in turn, can have spyware functionality. And it is quite hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a legit one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and pseudo antiviruses, popup-related ads are also exploited as a spreading way by different trojan viruses, for instance – coin miners. The consequences of actions of such malware is 100% unwanted, and can cost you hundreds or even thousands of dollars. And even if you are not tapping these banners, they can be clicked by whoever who also makes use of your computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the situation may become much more serious, and it will be much harder to deal with it without data and money loss. It is recommended to remove the viruses with antivirus applications as soon as possible.

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

The manual of Freenotifications adware clearing includes 2 sections. First, we need to remove the malware, and after that correct the results of its activity. The elimination task is pretty simple, since it may be performed even with the use of Microsoft Defender – anti-virus program that is available on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nonetheless, as a result of its huge resources usage, as well as some failures that may be pivotal for some groups of users, Defender is frequently disabled by the users, so its utilization is probably impossible. In addition, a variety of trojan viruses are able to switch off the embedded antivirus. It is much better to use the separated program that will not have such weakness.

I’d suggest you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven antivirus tool that will definitely eliminate the viruses from your PC and make an invulnerable shield with a Proactive protection function. But let’s handle Freenotifications adware first.

Removing Freenotifications 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 Freenotifications 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 web browsers are reset, you need to ensure that your browser will definitely connect the accurate DNS while connecting to the site 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.

Nonetheless, there is one trouble that makes the things a lot harder to repair, specifically without the anti-malware program. The majority of adware variations that are utilized to show you the Freenotifications pop-up advertisements are adjusting the deep browser setups, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to change your browser settings after your computer was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly crash soon. Sometimes, you will see no crash, however, significant lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 secs, and then it will be back to the typical, until you try 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 Freenotifications Pop-ups?

Name: Freenotifications

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