How to remove Protectconnection.icu pop-ups? — Fix Guide

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Protectconnection.icu pop-up alerts can appear out of the blue, covering the subject of the site you went to or opening your browser when you don’t desire it to be opened.

Clicking on the Protectconnection.icu ad may lead to the injection of various malware or unwanted programs. In this guide, you will see the tutorial of Protectconnection.icu popups removal in various methods, and also checking your computer for additional malware presence.

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What are Protectconnection.icu pop-ups?

Protectconnection.icu popups are a result of adware presence. Adware is a sort of malware that shows you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click ads, which produces a substantial volume of income for adware suppliers. These ads may consist of explicit composition, or have a web link to harmful content/website, because adware maintainers have no reason to inspect the goodness of the material they are going to reveal – their single target is cash.

Protectconnection.icu push notification

Protectconnection.icu push notification.

Pop-up promotions itself is a good, low-priced and also extremely successful advertising method1. It makes it possible for the seller to attach the buyers’ interest to their site, and the customers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they want to buy. When the person will receive a pop-up alert that the TV set he desires to purchase is offered at the online shop he/she checked out previously with a 15% price cut, one will undoubtedly use this chance and buy it. Taking into consideration the extremely small cost for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising method is a much-loved thing among the marketing departments of large internet stores.

Nonetheless, such a successful strategy could not be missed by malware creators. Potential to demonstrate the popup ads forcibly to the victims of malware invasion is an excellent basis for evil-minded tricks with the popup advertisements. And Protectconnection.icu advertisements is among hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a short summary for the Protectconnection.icu site
SiteProtectconnection.icu
HostingAS60781 LeaseWeb Netherlands B.V.
Netherlands, Amsterdam
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address85.17.31.152
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorUpdate, Ourcommonstories, Localdatadefence
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Protectconnection.icu virus?

There are a number of methods of becoming contaminated by the adware that result in the Protectconnection.icu popups storm. A lion’s part of this computer virus cases is after the free software or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Freeware can likewise be downloaded from the official web page, and the adware is provided as a legit bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A plenty of people often work with the uncertain programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, various utilities that are free, or even hacked programs. All of these types of programs are risky, since it is very simple to integrate a Protectconnection.icu 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.

Protectconnection.icu popup virus may additionally be concealed in the promotion somewhere on the strange website. Such web pages are in most cases loaded with bright and blinking advertisements, and their owners often approve any promotions to be posted on their web page. Thus, clicking such banners is a shot in the dark: only the advertisement contractor realizes what will occur when you click this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you may also get something far more risky, like ransomware or coin miner; the substantial share of coin miners circulation is exactly after the malicious ads.

People dislike popups

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

Potentially unwanted programs, like Protectconnection.icu popup virus may cause a wide range of troubles on your PC. Distracting is not the single problem – pop-ups may display you the advertisements, where you are offered to download another dubious application, or “a perfect anti-malware tool”. Scareware is often spread under the last motto. Potentially unwanted applications, in turn, may have spyware functions. And it is quite hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a normal one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and dubious antiviruses, popup-related promotions are also used as a distribution method by various trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of actions of such malware is 100% unwanted, and can cost you hundreds or even thousands of dollars. And even if you are not interacting with these banners, they may be clicked by someone who also makes use of your personal computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the things may become much more serious, and it will be much harder to deal with it without data and money loss. It is recommended to get rid of the viruses with anti-malware applications as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Protectconnection.icu pop-up advertisements?

The manual of Protectconnection.icu adware elimination contains 2 parts. Initially, we need to exterminate the malware, and afterwards deal with the results of its action. The removal task is very easy, since it can be done even with using Microsoft Defender – anti-malware software that is present on all computers with Windows 8/10. Nonetheless, because of its significant resources consumption, along with some errors that can be serious for some categories of individuals, Defender is often turned off by the users, so its usage is probably impossible. Furthermore, a variety of trojan viruses have the ability to shut off the embedded antivirus. It is better to make use of the separated program that will not have such weakness.

I would certainly recommend you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven security tool that will certainly exterminate the malware from your personal computer and make an impenetrable shield with a Proactive protection feature. However, let’s manage Protectconnection.icu adware first.

Removing Protectconnection.icu 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 Protectconnection.icu 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 ensure that your browser will definitely connect the proper DNS while connecting to the site you need. Create a text file named “hosts” on your pc’s desktop, after that open it and fill it with the following lines3:

# 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 harder to repair, especially without the anti-malware software. Most of adware variants that are used to show you the Protectconnection.icu pop-up ads are modifying the deep browser settings, 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 certainly collapse quickly. In some cases, you will see no crash, but large lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 secs, and afterwards it will be back to the typical, till you try to open settings once again.

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 Protectconnection.icu Pop-ups?

Name: Protectconnection.icu

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