How to remove Pickofiles pop-ups? — Fix Guide

Pickofiles pop-up notices can appear out of the blue, covering the content of the website you visited or opening your browser when you don’t need it to be opened.

Clicking the Pickofiles promotion may cause the injection of various malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the guideline of Pickofiles popups clearing in various manners, and also checking your system for other viruses existence.

It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!

Removing Pickofiles 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 Pickofiles pop-ups?

Pickofiles popups are a consequence of adware action. Adware is a type of malware that shows you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which generates a substantial amount of profit for adware distributors. These advertisements might include sometimes shocking material, or have a link to malicious content/website, due to the fact that adware maintainers have no purpose to inspect the goodness of the content they are going to reveal – their single target is money.

Pickofiles push notification.

Pop-up promotions itself is an excellent, affordable and also really successful advertising method¹. It makes it possible for the seller to attach the buyers’ attention to their website, and the customers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they want to buy. When the consumer will receive a pop-up notification that the TV set he wishes to purchase is available at the online shop he/she visited previously with a 15% price cut, one will definitely use this possibility and buy it. Considering the very small cost for the popups and their targeting, such a marketing method is a favourite thing among the marketing departments of big online sellers.

However, such a successful strategy could not be missed by malware creators. Option to show the popup ads forcibly to the victims of malware invasion is an excellent basis for evil-minded tricks with the popup advertisements. And Pickofiles.com promotions is among hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a short info for the Pickofiles site

How have I got the Pickofiles virus?

There are a number of ways of becoming infected by the adware that lead to the Pickofiles popups storm. A lion’s part of this computer virus cases is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Free software may also 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 huge amount of individuals often make use of the unreliable programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, different tools that are free of cost, or perhaps hacked programs. All of these types of software are risky, because it is very easy to integrate a Pickofiles 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.

Pickofiles popup malware can also be hidden in the ad somewhere on the unusual website. Such sites are usually filled with bright and blinking ads, and their owners often permit any type of promos to be placed on their web page. Thus, clicking on such banners is a risky thing: only the ad provider realizes what will happen when you press this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you may likewise receive something much more threatening, like ransomware or coin miner; the big share of coin miners distribution is exactly after the malicious advertisements.

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

Potentially undesirable applications, like Pickofiles pop-up virus may provoke a wide range of different troubles on your personal computer. Distracting is not the only effect – pop-up notifications can show you the promotions, where you are offered to get another strange application, or “a perfect anti-malware tool”. Scareware is usually spread with the last motto. Potentially unwanted programs, in turn, can have spyware functionality. And it is very hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a normal one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and dubious antiviruses, popup-related promotions 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 interacting with these promotions, they can be clicked by whoever who also uses your personal computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the situation may become much more serious, and it will be much harder to solve it without data loss. It is recommended to eliminate the viruses with antivirus applications as soon as possible.

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

The tutorial of Pickofiles adware removal includes 2 sections. First, we need to get rid of the malware, and after that deal with the consequences of its activity. The elimination task is quite easy, due to the fact that it can be done even with the use of Microsoft Defender – security software that is present on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nonetheless, due to its large resources utilization, along with some defects that may be serious for some kinds of individuals, Defender is often disabled by the users, so its usage is most likely impossible. Additionally, a variety of trojan viruses can shut off the embedded antivirus. It is much better to use the separated program that will not have such weakness.

I’d advise you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware² – a well-proven anti-malware device that will certainly wipe out the viruses from your personal computer and also make an invulnerable shield with a Proactive protection function. However, let’s deal with Pickofiles adware first.

Removing Pickofiles 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 Pickofiles 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 right DNS while connecting to the site you want. Make a text file titled “hosts” on your pc’s desktop, after that open it and fill it with the following text³:

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 problem that makes the things much more difficult to restore, especially without the anti-malware program. Most of adware versions that are utilized to show you the Pickofiles pop-up ads are adjusting the deep browser settings, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to change your browser settings after your machine was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly collapse soon. In some cases, you will see no crash, however, huge 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 try 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 Pickofiles Pop-ups?

Name: Pickofiles

Description: Pickofiles - 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 Pickofiles.com push notifications?” or “why do Pickofiles.com pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Pickofiles 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 suggest it for malware removal.
3. Official Microsoft guide for hosts file reset.