Remove Protectyourphone.digital Pop-up Virus — How to Remove?

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Protectyourphone.digital pop-up alerts may show up out of the blue, covering the subject of the page you explored or opening your web browser when you don’t need it to be opened.

Clicking on the Protectyourphone.digital promotion can trigger the injection of different malware or unwanted programs. In this guide, you will see the manual of Protectyourphone.digital popups removal in various methods, as well as inspecting your personal computer for extra viruses presence.

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What are Protectyourphone.digital pop-ups?

Protectyourphone.digital popups are an outcome of adware action. Adware is a type of malware that suggests you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which generates a large volume of earnings for adware representatives. These ads may include explicit information, or have a link to malevolent content/website, since adware maintainers have no reason to inspect the goodness of the web content they are going to show – their solitary target is cash.

Protectyourphone.digital push notification

Protectyourphone.digital push notification.

Pop-up advertising itself is an excellent, cheap and also extremely successful advertising method1. It enables the vendor to attach the buyers’ attention to their site, as well as the buyers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they wish to buy. When the consumer will receive a pop-up alert that the TV set he likes to purchase is available at the online store he/she visited earlier with a 15% discount, one will definitely use this opportunity and purchase it. Taking into consideration the extremely low price for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising tool is a much-loved thing among the marketing teams of huge internet retailers.

However, such a successful scheme could not be missed by virus creators. Option to demonstrate the popup advertisements forcibly to the targets of malware attack is a perfect basis for evil-minded adjustments with the popup ads. And Protectyourphone.digital ads is just one of hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a short summary for the Protectyourphone.digital
Site Protectyourphone.digital
Hosting AS13335 Cloudflare, Inc.
United States, San Francisco
Infection Type Adware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address 188.114.97.3
Symptoms Annoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behavior Gsfato, Guardedaffiliate, News
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Protectyourphone.digital virus?

There are a number of ways of becoming infected by the adware that cause the Protectyourphone.digital popups tornado. A lion’s part of this computer virus cases is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Freeware may additionally be downloaded from the official website, and the adware is supplied as a legitimate bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A number of individuals frequently make use of the uncertain programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, different apps that are free of cost, or even hacked programs. Every one of these types of software are dangerous, because it is quite simple to include a Protectyourphone.digital 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.

Protectyourphone.digital popup virus can likewise be hidden in the promotion somewhere on the unusual site. Such websites are usually loaded with bright and blinking advertisements, and their owners generally accept any promos to be published on their page. Therefore, clicking such banners is a risky thing: only the ad provider realizes what will occur when you press this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you may also get something much more threatening, like ransomware or coin miner; the big share of coin miners distribution is exactly after the malicious ads.

People dislike popups

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

Potentially undesirable applications, like Protectyourphone.digital pop-up virus may initiate a lot of different troubles on your personal computer. Distracting is not the single problem – pop-up notifications may display you the ads, where you are offered to get one more dubious program, or “a amazing security tool”. Scareware is usually distributed with the last motto. Potentially unwanted programs, in turn, can have spyware functions. And it is pretty hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a normal one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and fake antiviruses, popup-related advertisements are also used as a distribution way by various trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of actions of such malware is 100% unwanted, and can cost you several hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not tapping these banners, they can be clicked by someone who also uses your computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the situation can become much more serious, and it will be much harder to deal with it without data and money loss. It is recommended to remove the viruses with antivirus programs as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Protectyourphone.digital pop-up advertisements?

The tutorial of Protectyourphone.digital adware elimination contains 2 parts. First, we need to get rid of the malware, and afterwards fix the consequences of its activity. The removal task is very easy, because it may be performed even with making use of Microsoft Defender – anti-malware tool that is available on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nonetheless, as a result of its substantial resources utilization, as well as some problems that can be critical for some groups of individuals, Defender is often disabled by the users, so its use is probably impossible. Additionally, different trojan viruses are capable to disable the embedded antivirus. It is far better to make use of the separated program that will not have such weakness.

I’d advise you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven security tool that will certainly eliminate the malware from your PC and make an invulnerable cover with a Proactive protection feature. However, let’s take care of Protectyourphone.digital adware initially.

Removing Protectyourphone.digital 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 Protectyourphone.digital 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 make sure that your web browser will be connected the accurate DNS while connecting to the website you need. Create a text file named “hosts” on your 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.

Nonetheless, there is one trouble that makes the things a lot more difficult to restore, specifically without the anti-malware program. The majority of adware variations that are utilized to show you the Protectyourphone.digital pop-up advertisements are modifying the deep browser configurations, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to change your browser settings after your system was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly collapse quickly. In certain cases, you will see no crash, however, significant lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 seconds, and then it will be back to the typical, till you try to open settings 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 Protectyourphone.digital Pop-ups?

Name: Protectyourphone.digital

Description: Protectyourphone.digital - 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 Protectyourphone.digital push notifications?” or “why do Protectyourphone.digital pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Protectyourphone.digital 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 review and the reasons why I suggest 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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