How to remove Protectzone.vip pop-ups? — Fix Guide

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Protectzone.vip pop-up notices can appear unexpectedly, covering the material of the website you checked or opening your browser when you don’t wish it to be opened.

Clicking on the Protectzone.vip advertisement may result in the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this article, you will see the guideline of Protectzone.vip popups clearing in a couple of ways, as well as inspecting your computer for other malware existence.

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What are Protectzone.vip pop-ups?

Protectzone.vip popups are a result of adware presence. Adware is a type of malware that demonstrates to you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which produces a significant amount of earnings for adware suppliers. These promotions may include explicit composition, or have a link to harmful content/website, since adware maintainers have no reason to inspect the goodness of the material they are going to reveal – their single target is cash.

Protectzone.vip push notification

Protectzone.vip push notification.

Pop-up marketing itself is a good, cheap and really efficient advertising solution1. It allows the seller to attach the buyers’ attention to their site, and the customers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they want to buy. When the consumer will receive a pop-up alert that the TV set he likes to purchase is provided at the online shop he/she saw previously with a 15% price cut, one will definitely use this chance and buy it. Considering the extremely low price for the popups and their targeting, such a promotion and marketing method is a favourite thing amidst the marketing departments of large internet retailers.

However, such a successful plan could not be missed by malware developers. Potential to show the popup advertisements by force to the victims of malware attack is a great basis for malicious adjustments with the popup ads. And Protectzone.vip promotions is just one of hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a short info for the Protectzone.vip site
SiteProtectzone.vip
HostingAS13335 Cloudflare, Inc.
United States, San Francisco
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address188.114.97.3
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorPoshukach, Protect, Starthotdating
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Protectzone.vip virus?

There are a number of methods of becoming infected by the adware that lead to the Protectzone.vip 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. Free software may additionally be downloaded from the official site, and the adware is supplied as a legal bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A number of people oftentimes use the uncertain programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, a wide range of apps that are free, or perhaps hacked programs. Every one of these kinds of software are risky, because it is extremely easy to include a Protectzone.vip malware under the cover of part of the license hacking script, or as a component of the self-made algoritm within the Windows optimization tool.

Protectzone.vip popup malware may also be hidden in the advertisement somewhere on the strange web page. Such web pages are in most cases packed with intense and blinking ads, and their proprietors typically accept any type of promotions to be published on their page. Therefore, clicking such banners is a risky thing: only the advertisement contractor realizes what will happen when you click this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you may additionally get something a lot more dangerous, like ransomware or coin miner; the substantial share of coin miners circulation is exactly after the malicious advertisements.

People dislike popups

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

Potentially undesirable programs, like Protectzone.vip popup virus may provoke a variety of different troubles on your computer. Distracting is not the only effect – pop-ups may show you the advertisements, where you are offered to get one more dubious application, or “a perfect anti-malware tool”. Scareware is often spread with the last motto. Potentially unwanted programs, in turn, may have spyware functionality. And it is pretty hard to distinguish the undesirable 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 method by different trojan viruses, for instance – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such malware is 100% unwanted, and can cost you hundreds or even thousands of dollars. And even if you are not clicking these advertisements, 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 remove the viruses with antivirus applications as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Protectzone.vip pop-up advertisements?

The tutorial of Protectzone.vip adware removal includes 2 parts. First, we need to deal with the malware, and then deal with the consequences of its action. The elimination process is quite easy, since it may be performed even with using Microsoft Defender – security software that is present on all computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, because of its large resources consumption, as well as some failures that can be serious for some groups of individuals, Defender is oftentimes turned off by the users, so its utilization is probably impossible. Moreover, different trojan viruses are capable to turn off the embedded antivirus. It is better to use the separated program that will not have such weakness.

I’d suggest you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven security device that will undoubtedly remove the malware from your PC and also create an impenetrable cover with a Proactive protection feature. However, let’s take care of Protectzone.vip adware first.

Removing Protectzone.vip 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 Protectzone.vip 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 browser will definitely be connected the appropriate DNS while connecting to the site 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.

However, there is one issue that makes the things much harder to repair, specifically without the anti-malware software. Most of adware versions that are utilized to show you the Protectzone.vip pop-up promotions are modifying the deep browser settings, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to change your browser settings after your computer was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly crash quickly. In certain 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 attempt to open settings one more time.

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 Protectzone.vip Pop-ups?

Name: Protectzone.vip

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