Remove Phone-security.me Pop-up Virus — How to Remove?

Unwanted Phone-security.me pop-up notices may show up out of the blue, covering the content of the site you visited or opening your browser when you don’t wish it to be opened. Clicking on the Phone-security.me pop-up ad may trigger the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this guide, you will see the guideline of Phone-security.me popups removal in multiple methods, and also checking your system for additional malware presence.

It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!

Removing Phone-security.me 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 Phone-security.me pop-ups?

Phone-security.me popups are an outcome of adware action. Adware is a kind of malware that demonstrates to you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click ads, which produces a massive volume of revenue for adware representatives. These ads might contain explicit information, or have a web link to malicious content/website, because adware maintainers have no reason to inspect the goodness of the web content they are going to show – their single target is cash.

Phone-security.me push notification.

Pop-up advertising itself is an excellent, low-priced and extremely successful marketing instrument¹ It permits the seller to link the customers’ attention to their site, and the customers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they wish to purchase. When the customer will get a pop-up notification that the TV set he wishes to buy is available at the online shop he/she saw earlier with a 15% price cut, one will undoubtedly use this opportunity and purchase it. Taking into consideration the very low cost for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising method is a favorite thing among the advertising departments of big online retailers.

However, such a profitable strategy could not be missed by malware creators. Ability to demonstrate the popup ads by force to the victims of malware invasion is a perfect basis for evil-minded tricks with the popup advertisements. And Phone-security.me promotions is just one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a short info for the Phone-security.me site

How have I got the Phone-security.me virus?

There are a number of ways of becoming contaminated by the adware that create the Phone-security.me popups storm. A lion’s part of this virus cases is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Free software can likewise be downloaded from the main web page, and the adware is delivered as a legal bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A lot of people often work with the uncertain programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, different tools that are free, or perhaps hacked programs. Every one of these sorts of programs are risky, due to the fact that it is quite easy to integrate a Phone-security.me malware under the cover of part of the license hacking script, or as a part of the self-made algoritm inside of the Windows optimization tool.

Phone-security.me popup virus may likewise be hidden in the promotion somewhere on the strange site. Such sites are usually loaded with intense and blinking advertisements, and their owners generally approve any kind of promos to be published on their page. Thus, clicking on such banners is a shot in the dark: only the ad provider realizes what will happen when you click this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you can also receive something a lot more unsafe, like ransomware or coin miner; the large share of coin miners circulation is exactly after the malicious promotions.

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

How can I get rid of Phone-security.me pop-up advertisements?

The guide of Phone-security.me adware elimination includes 2 parts. First, we need to remove the malware, and after that fix the effects of its action. The elimination procedure is pretty easy, since it may be executed even with the use of Microsoft Defender – security tool that is present on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, due to its huge resources utilization, as well as some bugs that can be crucial for some kinds of individuals, Defender is often turned off by the users, so its utilization is most likely impossible. Furthermore, various trojan viruses are able to switch off the embedded antivirus. It is far better to use the separated program that will not have such exposures.

I’d recommend you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware² – a well-proven anti-malware device that will certainly remove the malware from your PC and make an impenetrable shield with a Proactive protection function. But let’s handle Phone-security.me adware initially.

Removing Phone-security.me 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 Phone-security.me 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 ensure that your web browser will definitely connect the accurate 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:

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 trouble that makes things a lot more difficult to restore, particularly without the anti-malware software. A lot of adware variants that are used to show you the Phone-security.me pop-up ads are changing the deep browser settings, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to change your browser settings after your computer was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly crash quickly. Sometimes, you will see no crash, however, large lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 secs, and then it will be back to the typical, until you attempt 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 Phone-security.me Pop-ups?

Name: Phone-security.me

Description: Phone-security.me - 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 Phone-security.me push notifications?” or “why do Phone-security.me pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Phone-security.me 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 review and also the reasons why I recommend it for malware elimination.
3. Official Microsoft guide for hosts file reset.