Protectedscans Pop-up Ads Removal — How to Fix Your Browser?

Protectedscans.com pop-ups that you can see while browsing the Web are the result of a malicious software infection that resides in your web browser. Such pop-ups emerge in ample quantities, diverting and irritating you.

The most of the pop-ups from Protectedscans.com site are not relevant, as it displays any advertising content it receives a contract for. Given that many pages promoted in this way are not benevolent, it is apparent to anticipate them to feature dangerous components. Specifically, they can throw you into various types of web deceptions.

What are Protectedscans pop-ups?

By certain characteristics, Protectedscans.com pop-ups are similar to normal pop-ups you may come across on legit websites. However, all the distinction – and malignancy – originates from this exact website. Pages like Protectedscans are commonly created with sole objective – to offer unsuspecting people to activate pop-ups and then begin spamming them.

Short summary of the Protectedscans.com pop-ups:

Ads by the Protectedscans.com site are not trustworthy either. At best, those will be completely irrelevant banners, that will still be annoying taking into account their frequency. However, more common scenarios encompass advertisements of enigmatic deals with 90% off, adult web pages ads or deception attempts. Here are some of the classic patterns for pop-up spam:

• Discover 5, 10, 20, or even 50 women near you who are eager to chat.
• Sign in on this new crypto exchange website and receive a substantial crypto bonus.
• Your system is infected with 15 viruses. Contact our tech support or perform an immediate scan.
• You’ve received a new message on Facebook, Twitter, or WhatsApp. Beware of phishing links.
• Visit this new, totally legitimate shopping site and claim your discount coupon.
• up your computer with an incredibly effective system cleaner.

Due to the illegal marketing strategy of Protectedscans.com, no lawful corporations will really utilize their promotion services. Instead, the entire range of subjects I’ve delineated above is managed by the same deceitful persons as those who stand behind Protectedscans. At times, upon interaction with the pop-up notification, you might be redirected to another page that suggests activating pop-up advertisements. The activity of multiple origins of pop-ups can transform your web browser into an avenue of a pop-up surge.

Where did Protectedscans pop-ups come from?

The primary and most common approach to access the pop-up spamming site is to navigate through content on warez sites, pages containing pirated content, and the like. The persons responsible for such questionable venues aim to counterbalance expenses via redirects, often as a promotional strategy. This type of redirection is commonly known as an “anti-bot verification”.

An additional plausible origin of pop-up advertisements is adware, currently active inside your system. It modifies browser settings in a way so it starts displaying Protectedscans pop-ups without your knowledge. However, this circumstance is relatively uncommon, as such malware employs its own, more efficient method to showcasing advertisements.

Are Protectedscans push notifications dangerous?

Yes, they are. At the surface, they may look harmless – just a colourful pop-up that appears from time to time. However, the things this window promotes differ sharply from what you used to see in pop-up advertisements. Protectedscans.com web page is controlled by fraudsters, who intentionally throw hundreds and thousands of irrelevant ads in pop-ups. They also don’t follow any manners of advertising and can make sporadic push notifications into a hurricane of promotions. For weak systems, that may be enough to make the system slower. But troubles are not over at this point.

As any other thing related to illegal advertising, Protectedscans pop-up advertisements don’t have legit deals to offer. Even when crooks make the banners looking similar to ones from Amazon, Walmart or Ebay, the website these banners will throw you to are completely different. And these pages can offer you to turn on other pop-ups, install a “useful” program, or pay for a thing at a big discount and never receive it. Let’s leave aside the cases when pop-up notifications promote phishing pages or straightforward malware. There’s no way these pages will bring you any good, thus interacting with them is a very bad idea. For the same reason, Protectedscans pop-up notifications are not recommended to click on either, and the best solution is to disable them as soon as possible.

How to remove Protectedscans pop-ups?

Reset your browsers manually

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 browser will connect the right DNS while connecting to the web page you need. Create a text file titled “hosts” on your pc’s desktop, then open it and fill it with the following lines²:

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.

Scan your system for possible viruses

Once the scan is complete, you will see the detections or a notification about a clean system. Proceed with pressing the Clean Up button (or OK when nothing is detected).

1. Official Microsoft guide for hosts file reset.