Remove Gsfato.live Virus — How to Fix Guide

Gsfato.live pop-up notifications may show up unexpectedly, covering the material of the site you visited or opening your browser when you do not need it to be opened.

Clicking the Gsfato.live ad can trigger the injection of various malware or unwanted programs. In this guide, you will see the tutorial of Gsfato.live popups removal in a couple of methods, and also examining your PC for additional viruses presence.

It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!

Removing Gsfato.live manually may take hours and may damage your PC in the process. I recommend you to download GridinSoft Anti-Malware for threats removal. Allows to complete scan and cure your PC during the trial period.

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What are Gsfato.live pop-ups?

Gsfato.live popups are an effect of adware activity. Adware is a type of malware that presents you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click ads, which creates a massive volume of earnings for adware distributors. These promotions might have explicit composition, or have a link to malevolent content/website, considering that adware maintainers have no reason to check the goodness of the content they are going to show – their single target is money.

Gsfato.live push notification.

Pop-up marketing itself is a good, low-cost and extremely productive marketing instrument¹. It enables the vendor to link the customers’ interest to their site, as well as the buyers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they want to buy. When the customer will receive a pop-up alert that the TV set he desires to purchase is offered at the online store he/she visited previously with a 15% price cut, one will undoubtedly use this opportunity and purchase it. Taking into consideration the very small cost for the popups and their targeting, such a marketing instrument is a much-loved thing amidst the marketing departments of large online sellers.

Nonetheless, such a successful system could not be missed by malware creators. Potential to demonstrate the popup ads by force to the victims of malware invasion is an ideal basis for malevolent adjustments with the popup advertisements. And Gsfato.live advertisements is one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a details for the Gsfato.live site

How have I got the Gsfato.live virus?

There are a huge amount of methods of becoming infected by the adware that cause the Gsfato.live popups storm. A lion’s part of this virus instances is after the free software or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Free software may also be downloaded from the main site, and the adware is provided as a legit bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A lot of individuals regularly use the unreliable programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, various utilities that are free, and even hacked programs. All of these kinds of programs are dangerous, since it is extremely simple to include a Gsfato.live malware under the guise of part of the license hacking script, or as a part of the self-made algoritm within the Windows optimization tool.

Gsfato.live popup virus can likewise be concealed in the promotion somewhere on the strange website. Such websites are generally loaded with intense and blinking ads, and their proprietors often permit any type of promos to be posted on their web page. Hence, clicking such banners is a risky thing: only the ad provider knows what will occur when you press this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you may also get something a lot more dangerous, like ransomware or coin miner; the big share of coin miners distribution is exactly after the malicious advertisements.

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

Potentially undesirable applications, like Gsfato.live pop-up virus may initiate a variety of different troubles on your personal computer. Distracting is not the only problem – pop-ups may display you the promotions, where you are offered to get one more unknown application, or “a amazing anti-malware tool”. Scareware is usually distributed with the last motto. Potentially undesirable programs, in turn, can have spyware functionality. And it is very hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a good one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and fake antiviruses, popup-related advertisements are also exploited as a spreading way by various trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such viruses is 100% unwanted, and can cost you hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not clicking these banners, they may be clicked by whoever who also uses 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 eliminate the viruses with anti-malware applications as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Gsfato.live pop-up advertisements?

The guide of Gsfato.live adware elimination consists of 2 sections. Initially, we need to exterminate the malware, and then repair the effects of its action. The removal process is quite simple, due to the fact that it may be done even with the use of Microsoft Defender – anti-malware tool that is present on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, due to its significant resources usage, as well as some bugs that may be critical for some kinds of individuals, Defender is frequently turned off by the users, so its usage is probably impossible. Moreover, various trojan viruses can turn off the embedded antivirus. It is much better to make use of the separated program that will not have such vulnerabilities.

I would certainly advise you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware² – a well-proven security device that will certainly wipe out the viruses from your system and make an impenetrable shield with a Proactive protection function. However, let’s handle Gsfato.live adware initially.

Removing Gsfato.live 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.

• 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.

• When the scan is over, you may choose the action for each detected virus. For all files of Gsfato.live malware the default option is “Delete”. Press “Apply” to finish the malware removal.

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. 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. In the next screen, find the “Refresh Firefox” option :

After choosing this option, you will see the next message :

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 make sure that your browser will be connected the accurate DNS while connecting to the website you need. Make a text file titled “hosts” on your desktop, then open it and fill it with the following text³:

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 problem that makes the things much harder to repair, particularly without the anti-malware program. The majority of adware versions that are used to show you the Gsfato.live pop-up promotions are modifying the deep browser settings, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to change your browser settings after your machine was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will collapse quickly. Sometimes, you will see no crash, but significant lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 seconds, and then it will be back to the normal, till you try to open settings once more.

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.

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.

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 Gsfato.live Pop-ups?

Name: Gsfato.live

Description: Gsfato.live - 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 Gsfato.live push notifications?” or “why do Gsfato.live pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Gsfato.live 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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1. More about pop-up advertisements on Wikipedia.
2. GridinSoft Anti-Malware overview and the reasons why I suggest it for malware removal.
3. Official Microsoft guide for hosts file reset.