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

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Pefog.live pop-up alerts can appear out of the blue, covering the subject of the site you went to or opening your browser when you do not want it to be opened.

Clicking the Pefog.live ad can trigger the injection of various malware or unwanted programs. In this article, you will see the guideline of Pefog.live popups clearing in several methods, as well as inspecting your system for extra viruses presence.

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What are Pefog.live pop-ups?

Pefog.live popups are an outcome of adware activity. Adware is a sort of malware that demonstrates to you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click ads, which produces a major amount of income for adware suppliers. These promotions may contain sometimes shocking material, or have a web link to harmful 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 cash.

Pefog.live push notification

Pefog.live push notification.

Pop-up advertising itself is a very good, low-priced and also extremely efficient marketing method1. It makes it possible for the vendor to link the buyers’ attention to their site, and the customers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they intend to purchase. When the person will get a pop-up alert that the TV set he likes to buy is provided at the online shop he/she saw previously with a 15% price cut, one will definitely use this possibility and purchase it. Considering the extremely low price for the popups and their targeting, such a promotion and marketing method is a favorite thing among the marketing departments of huge internet stores.

Nonetheless, such a rewarding plan could not be missed by malware developers. Potential to show the popup ads by force to the victims of malware attack is a perfect basis for malicious adjustments with the popup ads. And Pefog.live promotions is among hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a details for the Pefog.live site
SitePefog.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 behaviorNews, News, Pohim
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Pefog.live virus?

There are a huge amount of methods of becoming contaminated by the adware that lead to the Pefog.live popups tornado. A lion’s part of this virus cases is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Freeware can additionally be downloaded from the main website, and the adware is provided as a legitimate bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A number of users frequently work with the unreliable programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, various tools that are free of cost, or even hacked programs. All of these sorts of programs are risky, due to the fact that it is extremely easy to integrate a Pefog.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.

Pefog.live popup virus may also be hidden in the ad somewhere on the odd website. Such websites are usually full of intense and blinking advertisements, and their owners often permit any kind of promotions to be published on their web page. Hence, clicking such banners is a shot in the dark: only the advertisement provider knows what will occur when you press this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you can likewise get something far more risky, like ransomware or coin miner; the big share of coin miners circulation is exactly after the malicious promotions.

People dislike popups

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

Potentially undesirable applications, like Pefog.live popup virus can cause a lot of different troubles on your PC. Distracting is not the single effect – pop-ups may show you the ads, where you are offered to get another dubious program, or “a effective anti-malware tool”. Scareware is usually spread with the use of the last motto. Potentially unwanted applications, 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 dubious antiviruses, popup-related ads are also exploited as a distribution method by various trojan viruses, for instance – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such viruses is 100% unwanted, and can cost you several hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not interacting with these ads, they can be clicked by someone who also uses 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 and money loss. It is recommended to wipe out the viruses with anti-malware applications as soon as possible.

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

The tutorial of Pefog.live adware removal consists of 2 sections. First, we need to remove the malware, and afterwards fix the results of its activity. The removal task is pretty easy, because it can be performed even with using Microsoft Defender – security program that is available on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, due to its substantial resources usage, along with some failures that may be critical for some categories of individuals, Defender is often turned off by the users, so its use is likely impossible. Furthermore, various trojan viruses are capable to turn off the embedded antivirus. It is far better to make use of the separated program that will not have such weakness.

I would certainly recommend you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven security tool that will definitely exterminate the malware from your system and also make an impenetrable shield with a Proactive protection feature. However, let’s take care of Pefog.live adware initially.

Removing Pefog.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 Pefog.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 web browsers are reset, you need to make sure that your web browser will connect the right DNS while connecting to the web page you need. Create a text file titled “hosts” on your pc’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.

However, there is one trouble that makes the things much more difficult to fix, particularly without the anti-malware program. The majority of adware variations that are used to show you the Pefog.live pop-up ads are changing the deep browser configurations, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to fix your browser settings after your computer was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly crash quickly. In certain cases, you will see no crash, however, large lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 secs, and then it will be back to the normal, 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 Pefog.live Pop-ups?

Name: Pefog.live

Description: Pefog.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 Pefog.live push notifications?” or “why do Pefog.live pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Pefog.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 ads on Wikipedia.
  2. GridinSoft Anti-Malware review and the reasons why I suggest 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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