Got-defense Pop-up Ads Removal — How to Fix Your Browser?

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Got-defense pop-up notifications appear out of the blue, disturbing and irritating you. Nonetheless, they are much more than simple pop-up ads – their origins is purely malicious, and they may install other malicious stuff to your device. In this article, I will show you how to remove Got-defense pop-ups and explain how to avoid them in the future.

Any interaction with Got-defense pop-up notifications will be ineffective at best. In worst case scenario, the websites it can show you may introduce malware to your system. These pop-ups may also advertise fake shopping sites which will take your money and payment info. The latter generally ends up with losing all the money you have on the exposed card.

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What are Got-defense pop-ups?

As the pop-up definition goes, these are short and small advertisements that attract your attention to a product they promote. But the difference between regular pop-up advertisements and Got-defense pop-ups is the malignant origins of the latter. Normal pop-up advertisements are offered for you to enable on different sites with a legitimate purpose – keep you aware about the latest posts, discounts and so on. It is a useful thing to help your website to keep visitor’s attention and help the interested users to have the best price.

Brief description of the Got-defense.com pop-up ads:
NameGot-defense.com
HostingAS59253 Leaseweb Asia Pacific pte. ltd.
Singapore, Singapore
IP Address23.106.127.4
Malware typeAdware1
EffectUnwanted pop-up advertisements
Hazard levelMedium
Malware sourceApps from third-party websites, ads on dubious websites
Similar behaviorTheextensionexpert, Garend, Folizatingron
Removal method
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

Got-defense pop-up advertisements, as opposed, have a deal with unlegit sites. You will commonly see the offer to enable them after a redirection from another site. There’s nothing bad in redirecting unless it throws you to such a dubious place. At that point, enabling pop-up advertisements is offered under the guise of the anti-DDoS check. Alternatively, the web pages can deny showing you the content unless you enable these push notifications. These theses should already raise suspicion, as sites commonly feature a less obscure anti-bot mechanism. Spectating such an offer should be the reason to leave the website doubtlessly. Sometimes, even after clicking “Allow”, you will not get to the site – it has only a landing page with the offer to turn on the pop-up notifications.

Got-defense push notification

Got-defense push notification.

How does this work?

Most of browsers support turning on pop-ups from websites. Websites, on the other hand, may send notifications with the content they like. It may be an advertisement of the product published on this particular site, as well as a promotion of their partner page. As a result, you may see the pop-up from site X, but clicking it will throw you to website Y – because a link to that website was built in.

Scoundrels rely on this ability in their attempt to gain money using illegal advertising. They trick users into turning on pop-ups, and then just spread hundreds of banners of other crooks they contract with. As you may suppose, no benevolent companies will have a business with fraudsters. All the Got-defense notifications you can see lead to other fraudulent sites. In some cases, the same victim can get into a trap of multiple pop-up spamming sites, and its browser will turn into a complete mess.

The banners these crooks show are paid under the pay-per-view model. It generally provides a negligible commission for one person, but when you can send ads to a huge number of victims and make it hundreds of times every day – that is a way bigger sum. Despite most of such ads giving no result at all, it may still give all the participants a lot of money.

Are Got-defense pop-ups dangerous?

Yes, they are. Initially, they can look harmless – just a blinking pop-up that appears a couple times in an hour. However, the contents of this window differ drastically from what you generally see in pop-up advertisements. Got-defense.com website is ruled by crooks, who intendedly throw hundreds of malicious ads in pop-ups. They also never follow any manners of advertising and can launch sporadic pop-up ads into a hurricane of ads. For weak systems, that may be enough to make the system slower. But that is not all problems these pop-up advertisements carry.

Why people dislike popups

As with any other thing that touches illegal ads, Got-defense pop-up ads do not contain any legit offers. Even though crooks make the banners similar to ones from well-known retailers, the web page these ads will throw you to are completely different. And these pages may offer you to turn on other pop-ups, install a “useful” program, or pay for a thing at a big discount and never receive it. Let’s leave aside the cases when pop-up ads promote phishing pages or straightforward malware. There’s no way these pages will bring you any good, thus interacting with them is a very bad idea. For the same reason, Got-defense pop-up advertisements are not recommended to click on either, and the best solution is to disable them as soon as possible.

How to remove Got-defense pop-ups?

Fortunately, Got-defense pop-up notifications removal is pretty easy. They parasite in the web browser and can’t hide themselves on a disk. Nonetheless, as I stated above, some pop-up ads can introduce malicious programs to your system. It is hard to show all of the cases, and manual malware removal is a bad idea. For that reason, after getting rid of the pop-up ads the best option is to use anti-malware software. That is especially recommended if you have never allowed pop-up ads, but they still appeared. That can point at malware activity. GridinSoft Anti-Malware will perfectly fit both system recovery and malware scanning purposes, because of its system recovery functionality and advanced detection system.

First of all, you should reset your browser settings. You can do that in both manual and automatic manner. The former, obviously, takes more time to complete and can be somewhat complicated if you have never done that. Automated supposes the use of anti-malware programs that can reset all browser settings at once.

Reset your browsers 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 options for each browser. By default, they are set up in a manner that 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 the latter is also able to reset the HOSTS file without any additional commands.

Reset your browsers manually

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 ensure that your browser will connect the right DNS while connecting to the site you need. Create a text file titled “hosts” on your pc’s desktop, then open it and fill it with the following lines2:


# 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.

Scan your system for possible viruses

After removing the Got-defense push notifications, it’s time to see if these pop-ups brought any threat to your system. Launch GridinSoft Anti-Malware, and then click on Standard scan. It will be enough in most cases to find and remove malware. The scan will last 5-10 minutes; you are free to use your system during that process.

GridinSoft Anti-Malware during the scan process

Once the scan is complete, you will see the detections or a notification about a clean system. Proceed with pressing the Clean Up button (or OK when nothing is detected).

GridinSoft scan finished

How to Remove Got-defense Pop-ups?

Name: Got-defense

Description: Got-defense - 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 Got-defense.com push notifications?” or “why do Got-defense.com pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Got-defense 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 this malware type on GridinSoft Encyclopedia.
  2. 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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