Phonestar.info Ads Removal Guide — How to Fix It?

Phonestar.info pop-up alerts can show up unexpectedly, covering the subject of the site you checked or opening your browser when you do not want it to be opened.

Clicking on the Phonestar.info advertisement can result in the injection of various malware or unwanted programs. In this guide, you will see the tutorial of Phonestar.info popups clearing in multiple methods, as well as examining your system for other malware presence.

It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!

Removing Phonestar.info 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 Phonestar.info pop-ups?

Phonestar.info popups are a consequence of adware action. Adware is a type of malware that presents you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which produces a major volume of revenue for adware representatives. These advertisements might consist of sometimes shocking content, or have a link to malevolent content/website, due to the fact that adware maintainers have no reason to inspect the goodness of the web content they are going to show – their solitary target is cash.

Phonestar.info push notification.

Pop-up promotions itself is an excellent, low-priced and also very productive advertising tool¹. It permits the vendor to attach the customers’ attention to their site, and the buyers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they intend to purchase. When the consumer will receive a pop-up notification that the TV set he desires to purchase is available at the online shop he/she saw previously with a 15% price cut, one will undoubtedly use this opportunity and purchase it. Taking into consideration the extremely low cost for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising and marketing tool is a favorite thing among the marketing departments of big online retail stores.

Nevertheless, such a profitable system could not be missed by malware creators. Potential to show the popup advertisements by force to the people of malware attack is a perfect basis for malicious manipulations with the popup ads. And Phonestar.info advertisements is one of hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a short summary for the Phonestar.info

How have I got the Phonestar.info virus?

There are a plenty of methods of getting infected by the adware that lead to the Phonestar.info popups tornado. A lion’s part of this malware incidents is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Freeware can additionally be downloaded from the main site, and the adware is supplied as a legal bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A plenty of individuals often work with the dubious programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, a wide range of utilities that are free of cost, or perhaps hacked programs. Every one of these sorts of applications are risky, due to the fact that it is extremely simple to build in a Phonestar.info malware under the cover of part of the license hacking script, or as a part of the self-made algoritm within the Windows optimization tool.

Phonestar.info popup malware can additionally be concealed in the promotion somewhere on the strange site. Such web pages are usually loaded with bright and blinking advertisements, and their owners generally accept any type of promotions to be published on their web page. Therefore, clicking on such banners is a shot in the dark: only the ad contractor knows what will occur when you press this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you may likewise receive something far more dangerous, like ransomware or coin miner; the large share of coin miners circulation is exactly after the malicious advertisements.

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

Potentially undesirable applications, like Phonestar.info popup virus may initiate a variety of troubles on your PC. Distracting is not the single problem – pop-up notifications may display you the banners, where you are offered to get one more dubious application, or “a amazing anti-malware tool”. Scareware is often distributed with the use of the last slogun. Potentially undesirable programs, in turn, can have spyware functions. And it is pretty hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a legit one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and dubious antiviruses, popup-related ads are also chosen as a spreading method by various trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of actions of such viruses is 100% unwanted, and can cost you hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not clicking these banners, they can be clicked by someone who also makes use of your computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the things 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 antivirus programs as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Phonestar.info pop-up advertisements?

The guide of Phonestar.info adware elimination consists of 2 sections. Initially, we need to get rid of the malware, and after that fix the consequences of its action. The elimination procedure is pretty easy, because it may be executed even with the use of Microsoft Defender – security program that is available on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, due to its huge resources usage, as well as some problems that may be crucial for some groups of users, Defender is frequently turned off by the users, so its use is probably impossible. Additionally, a wide range of trojan viruses can turn off the embedded antivirus. It is much better to make use of the separated program that will not have such exposures.

I would certainly recommend you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware² – a well-proven antivirus tool that will undoubtedly eliminate the malware from your system and also create an invulnerable shield with a Proactive protection feature. But let’s take care of Phonestar.info adware first.

Removing Phonestar.info 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 Phonestar.info 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 browsers are reset, you need to ensure that your web browser will connect the right DNS while connecting to the web page you need. Create a text file named “hosts” on your computer’s desktop, then open it and fill it with the following lines³:

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 a lot more difficult to repair, specifically without the anti-malware software. A lot of adware variants that are used to show you the Phonestar.info pop-up promotions are modifying the deep browser setups, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to change your browser settings after your system was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will collapse quickly. In certain cases, you will see no crash, but huge lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 seconds, and afterwards it will be back to the typical, till 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.

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 Phonestar.info Pop-ups?

Name: Phonestar.info

Description: Phonestar.info - 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 Phonestar.info push notifications?” or “why do Phonestar.info pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Phonestar.info 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 ads on Wikipedia.
2. GridinSoft Anti-Malware review and the reasons why I advise it for malware removal.
3. Official Microsoft guide for hosts file reset.