Notfreeads Ads Removal Guide — How to Fix It?

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Notfreeads pop-up notices may show up unexpectedly, covering the material of the page you visited or opening your browser when you do not need it to be opened.

Clicking on the Notfreeads advertisement can result in the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this guide, you will see the guideline of Notfreeads popups clearing in several methods, and also checking your personal computer for extra viruses presence.

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What are Notfreeads pop-ups?

Notfreeads popups are a consequence of adware action. Adware is a type of malware that demonstrates to you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click ads, which generates a large volume of profit for adware representatives. These advertisements might include explicit material, or have a link to harmful content/website, because adware maintainers have no reason to inspect the goodness of the content they are going to show – their solitary target is cash.

Notfreeads push notification

Notfreeads push notification.

Pop-up promotions itself is a very good, cheap and extremely productive advertising solution1. It makes it possible for the seller to link the customers’ interest to their website, as well as the buyers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they intend to buy. When the person will get a pop-up notification that the TV set he wishes to buy is provided at the online shop he/she checked out previously with a 15% discount, one will definitely use this possibility and get it. Taking into consideration the incredibly low cost for the popups and their targeting, such a marketing tool is a favorite thing among the marketing departments of huge internet sellers.

Nonetheless, such a rewarding plan could not be missed by malware creators. Option to demonstrate the popup advertisements by force to the targets of malware invasion is a perfect basis for malicious tricks with the popup advertisements. And Notfreeads.com ads is one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a short summary for the Notfreeads
SiteNotfreeads.com
HostingAS14618 Amazon.com, Inc.
United States, Ashburn
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address35.174.183.139
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorFrameboxxindore, Go, Knownwarn
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Notfreeads virus?

There are a lot of ways of getting infected by the adware that result in the Notfreeads popups tornado. A lion’s part of this malware incidents is after the free software or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Freeware can also be downloaded from the main site, and the adware is provided as a legal bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A huge amount of people regularly work with the unreliable programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, a wide range of apps that are free, or perhaps hacked programs. Every one of these kinds of software are unsafe, because it is extremely simple to include a Notfreeads malware under the cover of part of the license hacking script, or as a component of the self-made algoritm within the Windows optimization tool.

Notfreeads popup virus can also be concealed in the promotion somewhere on the strange site. Such sites are in most cases full of bright and blinking ads, and their proprietors generally permit any promos to be placed on their web page. Thus, clicking on such banners is a risky thing: only the ad provider knows what will happen when you click this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you can also get something a lot more threatening, like ransomware or coin miner; the big share of coin miners distribution 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 applications, like Notfreeads popup virus may provoke a wide range of different troubles on your PC. Distracting is not the only problem – pop-up notifications can display you the advertisements, where you are offered to download another unknown application, or “a amazing security tool”. Scareware is usually spread with the use of the last motto. Potentially undesirable programs, in turn, may have spyware functionality. And it is pretty 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 banners are also exploited as a distribution method 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 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 deal with it without data loss. It is recommended to get rid of the viruses with antivirus programs as soon as possible.

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

The guide of Notfreeads adware removal consists of 2 parts. First, we need to exterminate the malware, and afterwards correct the consequences of its action. The removal process is really simple, due to the fact that it may be executed even with using Microsoft Defender – anti-virus tool that is available on all computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, due to its large resources usage, as well as some failures that can be critical for some kinds of individuals, Defender is oftentimes disabled by the users, so its usage is probably impossible. In addition, a wide range of trojan viruses are capable to switch off the embedded antivirus. It is better to make use of the separated program that will not have such vulnerabilities.

I’d recommend you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven anti-malware device that will surely remove the viruses from your computer and also make an impenetrable cover with a Proactive protection function. However, let’s deal with Notfreeads adware first.

Removing Notfreeads 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 Notfreeads 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 browser will definitely connect the correct DNS while connecting to the web page you need. Create a text file titled “hosts” on your computer’s desktop, then 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.

Nonetheless, there is one issue that makes the things a lot more difficult to restore, particularly without the anti-malware program. The majority of adware variations that are utilized to show you the Notfreeads pop-up ads are adjusting the deep browser setups, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to fix your browser settings after your computer was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly crash soon. In certain cases, you will see no crash, however, significant lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 secs, and afterwards it will be back to the normal, until you attempt to open settings 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 Notfreeads Pop-ups?

Name: Notfreeads

Description: Notfreeads - 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 Notfreeads.com push notifications?” or “why do Notfreeads.com pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Notfreeads 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 advertisements on Wikipedia.
  2. GridinSoft Anti-Malware overview and also the reasons why I recommend 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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