Pecog.live Ads Removal Guide — How to Fix It?

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Pecog.live pop-up notices can appear unexpectedly, covering the content of the site you explored or opening your browser when you do not need it to be opened.

Clicking the Pecog.live advertisement can result in the injection of various malware or unwanted programs. In this guide, you will see the tutorial of Pecog.live popups removal in multiple ways, and also examining your personal computer for additional viruses presence.

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What are Pecog.live pop-ups?

Pecog.live popups are a consequence of adware presence. Adware is a kind of malware that suggests you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click promotions, which produces a massive amount of earnings for adware distributors. These advertisements may contain sometimes shocking information, or have a link to malevolent content/website, since adware maintainers have no purpose to examine the goodness of the content they are going to show – their single target is money.

Pecog.live push notification

Pecog.live push notification.

Pop-up advertising itself is a very good, cheap and really successful marketing solution1. It makes it possible for the seller to link the buyers’ interest to their site, and the buyers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they wish to buy. When the customer will get a pop-up notification that the TV set he desires to buy is provided at the online store he/she checked out earlier with a 15% price cut, one will definitely use this possibility and get it. Considering the exceptionally small cost for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising instrument is a much-loved thing amidst the advertising teams of large online stores.

Nonetheless, such a rewarding plan could not be missed by malware developers. Option to show the popup ads by force to the targets of malware invasion is an excellent basis for malevolent tricks with the popup ads. And Pecog.live promotions is one of hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a short details for the Pecog.live
SitePecog.live
HostingAS14061 DigitalOcean, LLC
United States, North Bergen
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address157.230.4.182
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorPecot, Pefog, News
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Pecog.live virus?

There are a huge amount of ways of getting contaminated by the adware that trigger the Pecog.live popups storm. A lion’s part of this malware incidents is after the free software or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Freeware may additionally be downloaded from the main web page, and the adware is provided as a legit bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A number of people frequently make use of the dubious programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, various utilities that are free of cost, and even hacked programs. All of these kinds of software are dangerous, since it is quite easy to include a Pecog.live malware under the guise of part of the license hacking script, or as a component of the self-made algoritm inside of the Windows optimization tool.

Pecog.live popup virus can also be concealed in the ad somewhere on the odd web page. Such web pages are usually loaded with bright and blinking advertisements, and their proprietors usually permit any type of promotions to be published on their page. Hence, clicking such banners is a shot in the dark: only the ad contractor knows what will happen when you press this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you can likewise receive something a lot more dangerous, like ransomware or coin miner; the large 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 unwanted applications, like Pecog.live pop-up virus can provoke a wide range of problems on your computer. Distracting is not the single problem – pop-ups may show you the ads, where you are offered to get another strange program, or “a effective security tool”. Scareware is usually spread with the use of the last slogun. Potentially unwanted programs, in turn, can have spyware functions. And it is pretty hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a good one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and pseudo antiviruses, popup-related banners are also exploited as a spreading way by various trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such viruses is 100% unpleasant, and can cost you several hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not tapping these advertisements, they may be clicked by whoever who also makes use of your PC – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the situation 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 applications as soon as possible.

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

The guide of Pecog.live adware elimination contains 2 parts. First, we need to remove the malware, and after that deal with the results of its activity. The elimination procedure is quite easy, because it may be executed even with the use of Microsoft Defender – anti-malware program that is present on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. However, because of its substantial resources usage, along with some errors that may be pivotal for some kinds of users, Defender is frequently disabled by the users, so its utilization is likely impossible. Moreover, various trojan viruses are capable to shut off the embedded antivirus. It is much better to make use of the separated program that will not have such vulnerabilities.

I would certainly suggest you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven antivirus device that will surely remove the viruses from your PC and create an invulnerable shield with a Proactive protection feature. But let’s handle Pecog.live adware first.

Removing Pecog.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.
  • 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 Pecog.live 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 right DNS while connecting to the site you want. Create a text file named “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.

However, there is one trouble that makes the things much more difficult to fix, specifically without the anti-malware software. The majority of adware versions that are utilized to show you the Pecog.live pop-up promotions are modifying the deep browser setups, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to fix your browser settings after your machine was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly crash quickly. In certain cases, you will see no crash, but significant lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 seconds, and then it will be back to the typical, till you try 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 Pecog.live Pop-ups?

Name: Pecog.live

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

  1. More about pop-up advertisements on Wikipedia.
  2. GridinSoft Anti-Malware overview and also the reasons why I advise 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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