How to remove Rationfora pop-ups? — Fix Guide

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Rationfora pop-up notices may show up unexpectedly, covering the content of the website you checked or opening your browser when you don’t desire it to be opened.

Clicking on the Rationfora advertisement can trigger the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the manual of Rationfora popups removal in multiple ways, as well as examining your computer for additional malware presence.

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What are Rationfora pop-ups?

Quick reference

In addition to the traditional adverts that most broadcasters use on commercials in their broadcast news, digital marketing uses additional tools to increase engagement and sales when relevant. Such means that, even if they are in no context advertising or market information, if the consumer receives adverts in the format of a pop-up alert, such a ad will be placed next to them as often as possible. Additionally, it also means that advertisements that are not in any other format for example are not necessarily included in the ad. There are no ‘sellers’, but rather “sellers” who can make content available to the consumer that is not broadcast content, or even news content, in any form.

Rationfora popups are a consequence of adware activity. Adware is a sort of malware that suggests you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click ads, which produces a substantial volume of profit for adware distributors. These promotions may consist of explicit composition, or have a link to malevolent content/website, since adware maintainers have no reason to inspect the goodness of the content they are going to show – their solitary target is money.

Rationfora push notification

Rationfora push notification.

Pop-up promotions itself is a very good, cheap and really efficient advertising method1. It enables the seller to attach the buyers’ interest to their website, and the buyers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they wish to purchase. When the customer will receive a pop-up notification that the TV set he wishes to purchase is offered at the online shop he/she visited earlier with a 15% price cut, one will undoubtedly use this possibility and purchase it. Taking into consideration the very low price for the popups and their targeting, such a promotion and marketing tool is a favorite thing amongst the advertising teams of large online stores.

Nevertheless, such a rewarding plan could not be missed by virus developers. Potential to show the popup advertisements forcibly to the people of malware invasion is a great basis for evil-minded tricks with the popup ads. And Rationfora.online promotions is among hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a summary for the Rationfora site
Site Rationfora.online
Hosting AS14618 Amazon.com, Inc.
United States, Ashburn
Infection Type Adware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address 54.144.3.29
Symptoms Annoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behavior Loadpu1, Lwedding, Actualnews
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Rationfora virus?

There are a huge amount of ways of becoming infected by the adware that result in the Rationfora popups tornado. A lion’s part of this virus instances is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Free software can also be downloaded from the official web page, and the adware is presented as a legitimate bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A number of people frequently use the uncertain programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, a wide range of tools that are free, or even hacked programs. Every one of these sorts of programs are dangerous, because it is quite easy to include a Rationfora malware under the cover of part of the license hacking script, or as a component of the self-made algoritm inside of the Windows optimization tool.

Rationfora popup malware may also be hidden in the ad somewhere on the unusual web page. Such sites are typically filled with intense and blinking ads, and their owners often permit any kind of promotions to be published on their web page. For this reason, clicking on such banners is a risky thing: only the ad provider knows what will occur when you press this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you may additionally get something far more dangerous, 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 applications, like Rationfora popup virus can initiate a variety of different problems on your computer. Distracting is not the single problem – pop-up notifications can present you the advertisements, where you are offered to get another strange program, or “a perfect security 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 unwanted app from a legit one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and pseudo antiviruses, popup-related ads 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 clicking these advertisements, they may be clicked by whoever who also uses your computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the things 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 Rationfora pop-up advertisements?

The guide of Rationfora adware removal includes 2 sections. Initially, we need to deal with the malware, and then take care of the consequences of its action. The removal task is really simple, because it can be done even with using Microsoft Defender – anti-malware tool that is present on all computers with Windows 8/10. Nonetheless, as a result of its substantial resources consumption, as well as some errors that can be crucial for some kinds of users, Defender is often disabled by the users, so its usage is likely impossible. In addition, different trojan viruses are able to switch off the embedded antivirus. It is much better to use the separated program that will not have such exposures.

I’d suggest you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven security tool that will surely eliminate the malware from your computer and also make an impenetrable shield with a Proactive protection function. But let’s deal with Rationfora adware initially.

Removing Rationfora 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 Rationfora 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 web browser will connect the proper DNS while connecting to the web page you want. Make a text file titled “hosts” on your computer’s desktop, then 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 problem that makes things much harder to repair, especially without the anti-malware program. A lot of adware variations that are utilized to show you the Rationfora pop-up promotions are altering the deep browser settings, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to fix your browser settings after your computer was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly collapse quickly. In some cases, you will see no crash, however, huge lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 secs, and then it will be back to the typical, till 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 Rationfora Pop-ups?

Name: Rationfora

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