Remove PortDOutside Virus — How to Fix Guide

Written by Wilbur Woodham
PortDOutside pop-up notifications can appear out of the blue, covering the subject of the page you checked or opening your web browser when you don’t need it to be opened.

Clicking on the PortDOutside ad can result in the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this guide, you will see the guideline of PortDOutside popups removal in several manners, as well as examining your PC for additional viruses existence.

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What are PortDOutside pop-ups?

PortDOutside popups are an outcome of adware action. Adware is a sort of malware that demonstrates to you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click promotions, which creates a significant volume of revenue for adware distributors. These ads may contain explicit information, or have a web link to malevolent content/website, because adware maintainers have no purpose to inspect the goodness of the content they are going to reveal – their single target is money.

PortDOutside push notification

PortDOutside push notification.

Pop-up promotions itself is a very good, low-cost and very successful marketing tool1. It permits the vendor to attach the customers’ attention to their website, as well as the buyers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they wish to buy. When the customer will receive a pop-up alert that the TV set he desires to purchase is offered at the online store he/she checked out previously with a 15% price cut, one will certainly use this opportunity and buy it. Considering the extremely low cost for the popups and their targeting, such a marketing tool is a favourite thing amidst the marketing departments of big online retailers.

Nevertheless, such a rewarding strategy could not be missed by malware creators. Potential to demonstrate the popup ads forcibly to the targets of malware invasion is a great basis for malicious tricks with the popup ads. And Portdoutside.xyz advertisements is among hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a summary for the PortDOutside
Site Portdoutside.xyz
Hosting AS16509 Amazon.com, Inc.
Netherlands, Amsterdam
Infection Type Adware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address 52.222.139.85
Symptoms Annoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behavior News, News, Fastlist
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the PortDOutside virus?

There are a lot of methods of getting infected by the adware that cause the PortDOutside popups storm. A lion’s part of this virus incidents is after the free software or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Free software may also be downloaded from the official website, and the adware is delivered as a legitimate bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A huge amount of users regularly work with the uncertain programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, a wide range of tools that are free of cost, or perhaps hacked programs. Every one of these kinds of applications are dangerous, since it is extremely simple to include a PortDOutside malware under the cover of part of the license hacking script, or as a component of the self-made algoritm inside of the Windows optimization tool.

PortDOutside popup virus may additionally be hidden in the advertisement somewhere on the odd web page. Such sites are usually loaded with bright and blinking ads, and their owners often accept any promotions to be posted on their web page. For this reason, clicking on such banners is a shot in the dark: only the ad contractor realizes what will happen when you press this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you can additionally get something far more unsafe, like ransomware or coin miner; the substantial 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 PortDOutside popup virus may initiate a lot of different troubles on your personal computer. Distracting is not the single effect – pop-up notifications can display you the advertisements, where you are offered to get another unknown program, or “a amazing anti-malware tool”. Scareware is usually distributed under the last motto. Potentially unwanted programs, in turn, can have spyware functionality. And it is quite hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a good one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and dubious antiviruses, popup-related ads are also chosen as a spreading way by different 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 clicking these promotions, they can be clicked by someone 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 and money loss. It is recommended to get rid of the viruses with antivirus programs as soon as possible.

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

The guide of PortDOutside adware elimination includes 2 parts. Initially, we need to get rid of the malware, and then take care of the results of its activity. The removal task is really simple, since it can be executed even with making use of Microsoft Defender – anti-virus program that is available on all computers with Windows 8/10. However, as a result of its significant resources consumption, along with some defects that can be serious for some groups of users, Defender is frequently turned off by the users, so its utilization is likely impossible. In addition, 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 utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven security tool that will certainly eliminate the malware from your PC and also make an impenetrable cover with a Proactive protection feature. However, let’s deal with PortDOutside adware first.

Removing PortDOutside 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 PortDOutside 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 ensure that your browser will connect the correct DNS while connecting to the website you want. Make a text file titled “hosts” on your pc’s desktop, after that open it and fill it with the following text3:

# 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.

Nonetheless, there is one problem 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 PortDOutside pop-up advertisements are changing the deep browser setups, 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 crash soon. In certain cases, you will see no crash, however, huge lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 secs, and after that it will be back to the normal, up 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.

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 PortDOutside Pop-ups?

Name: PortDOutside

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