How to remove Propeller-tracking pop-ups? — Fix Guide

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Propeller-tracking pop-up alerts may appear unexpectedly, covering the post of the website you went to or opening your browser when you do not desire it to be opened.

Clicking on the Propeller-tracking ad may lead to the injection of various malware or unwanted programs. In this article, you will see the guide of Propeller-tracking popups clearing in various manners, and also examining your PC for extra viruses existence.

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What are Propeller-tracking pop-ups?

Propeller-tracking popups are a result of adware activity. Adware is a type of malware that demonstrates to you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click promotions, which generates a substantial amount of earnings for adware representatives. These promotions might have explicit material, or have a link to malevolent content/website, due to the fact that adware maintainers have no purpose to inspect the goodness of the material they are going to reveal – their single target is cash.

Propeller-tracking push notification

Propeller-tracking push notification.

Pop-up marketing itself is an excellent, low-cost and also really productive marketing solution1. It permits the seller to attach the customers’ attention to their website, and the customers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they wish to buy. When the person will get a pop-up notification that the TV set he likes to buy is available at the online shop he/she checked out earlier with a 15% discount, one will definitely use this chance and buy it. Considering the incredibly small cost for the popups and their targeting, such a promotion and marketing instrument is a favorite thing amongst the advertising teams of large internet retailers.

However, such a rewarding system could not be missed by virus creators. Ability to show the popup advertisements by force to the people of malware invasion is a great basis for evil-minded adjustments with the popup promotions. And Propeller-tracking.com promotions is just one of hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a summary for the Propeller-tracking site
Site Propeller-tracking.com
Hosting AS9002 RETN Limited
Netherlands, Amsterdam
Infection Type Adware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address 139.45.197.240
Symptoms Annoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behavior Slavesenviablegrammar, Effectivegatetocontent, Ourcommonnews
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Propeller-tracking virus?

There are a plenty of ways of getting infected by the adware that create the Propeller-tracking popups storm. A lion’s part of this malware cases is after the free software or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Free software may also be downloaded from the official web page, and the adware is offered as a legit bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A lot of users frequently make use of the dubious programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, a wide range of apps that are free, or even hacked programs. All of these kinds of applications are dangerous, due to the fact that it is very simple to build in a Propeller-tracking malware under the guise of part of the license hacking script, or as a component of the self-made algoritm inside of the Windows optimization tool.

Propeller-tracking popup malware may likewise be concealed in the promotion somewhere on the odd website. Such websites are generally packed with bright and blinking advertisements, and their proprietors often accept any promotions to be placed on their web page. Thus, clicking on such banners is a shot in the dark: only the ad contractor realizes what will occur when you click this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you may additionally receive something a lot 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 unwanted applications, like Propeller-tracking pop-up virus may initiate a wide range of different troubles on your computer. Distracting is not the only effect – pop-ups may show you the banners, where you are offered to download another dubious program, or “a effective anti-malware tool”. Scareware is often distributed under the last slogun. Potentially unwanted applications, in turn, can have spyware functions. And it is very hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a legit one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and pseudo antiviruses, popup-related advertisements are also exploited as a distribution way by different trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such viruses is 100% unwanted, and can cost you hundreds or even thousands of dollars. And even if you are not interacting with these advertisements, they can be clicked by whoever who also uses your PC – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the things may become much more serious, and it will be much harder to deal with it without data loss. It is recommended to get rid of the viruses with anti-malware applications as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Propeller-tracking pop-up advertisements?

The guide of Propeller-tracking adware removal consists of 2 sections. First, we need to eliminate the malware, and then fix the effects of its action. The removal process is really easy, due to the fact that it can be executed even with making use of Microsoft Defender – anti-virus software that is present on all computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, because of its significant resources consumption, along with some errors that can be critical for some types of users, Defender is often turned off by the users, so its utilization is likely impossible. Moreover, a variety of trojan viruses are able to shut off the embedded antivirus. It is much better to use the separated program that will not have such vulnerabilities.

I would certainly recommend you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven security tool that will undoubtedly erase the viruses from your computer and make an impenetrable shield with a Proactive protection feature. However, let’s take care of Propeller-tracking adware first.

Removing Propeller-tracking 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 Propeller-tracking 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 browsers are reset, you need to make sure that your web browser will connect the appropriate DNS while connecting to the website you need. Create a text file named “hosts” on your desktop, then 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.

However, there is one trouble that makes the things a lot more difficult to repair, especially without the anti-malware software. Most of adware versions that are utilized to show you the Propeller-tracking pop-up promotions are changing the deep browser settings, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to change your browser settings after your machine was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will collapse soon. Sometimes, you will see no crash, but huge lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 secs, and then it will be back to the normal, 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.

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 Propeller-tracking Pop-ups?

Name: Propeller-tracking

Description: Propeller-tracking - 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 Propeller-tracking.com push notifications?” or “why do Propeller-tracking.com pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Propeller-tracking 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 also the reasons why I suggest it for malware removal.
  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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