Remove Reftourcop.link Virus — How to Fix Guide

Reftourcop.link pop-up notices may appear out of the blue, covering the material of the website you checked or opening your browser when you do not want it to be opened.

Clicking the Reftourcop.link promotion may lead to the injection of different malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the guide of Reftourcop.link popups clearing in various manners, as well as checking your personal computer for extra viruses presence.

It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!

Removing Reftourcop.link manually may take hours and may damage your PC in the process. I recommend you to download GridinSoft Anti-Malware for threats removal. Allows to complete scan and cure your PC during the trial period.

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What are Reftourcop.link pop-ups?

Reftourcop.link 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 creates a major volume of profit for adware representatives. These promotions may have sometimes shocking composition, or have a web link to malevolent content/website, because adware maintainers have no purpose to examine the goodness of the web content they are going to show – their solitary target is money.

Reftourcop.link push notification.

Pop-up advertising itself is a good, affordable and also extremely effective marketing tool¹. It allows the vendor to attach the buyers’ interest to their site, and the customers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they wish to purchase. When the person will get a pop-up alert that the TV set he desires to buy is offered at the online shop he/she visited previously with a 15% discount, one will definitely use this chance and purchase it. Considering the extremely small cost for the popups and their targeting, such a promotion and marketing method is a favorite thing among the advertising teams of big online sellers.

However, such a profitable plan could not be missed by malware developers. Ability to demonstrate the popup advertisements forcibly to the victims of malware attack is a perfect basis for malevolent manipulations with the popup ads. And Reftourcop.link advertisements is just one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a short summary for the Reftourcop.link site

How have I got the Reftourcop.link virus?

There are a huge amount of ways of becoming contaminated by the adware that result in the Reftourcop.link popups tornado. A lion’s part of this virus cases is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Free software may likewise be downloaded from the official website, and the adware is provided as a legit bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A huge amount of users often work with the unreliable programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, various utilities that are free of cost, or perhaps hacked programs. Every one of these types of programs are dangerous, because it is very easy to build in a Reftourcop.link malware under the guise of part of the license hacking script, or as a component of the self-made algoritm inside of the Windows optimization tool.

Reftourcop.link popup virus can additionally be concealed in the promotion somewhere on the strange web page. Such websites are in most cases full of colorful and blinking ads, and their proprietors usually approve any type of promos to be placed on their web page. Thus, clicking such banners is a shot in the dark: only the advertisement provider realizes what will happen when you click this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you may likewise receive something far more dangerous, like ransomware or coin miner; the large share of coin miners distribution is exactly after the malicious ads.

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

Potentially unwanted programs, like Reftourcop.link popup virus can cause a lot of troubles on your computer. Distracting is not the only problem – pop-up notifications may show you the ads, where you are offered to download another unknown program, or “a perfect security tool”. Scareware is often distributed under the last motto. Potentially undesirable applications, in turn, may have spyware functionality. And it is quite hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a normal one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and fake antiviruses, popup-related banners are also used as a spreading way by different trojan viruses, for instance – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such viruses is 100% unpleasant, and can cost you hundreds or even thousands of dollars. And even if you are not tapping these advertisements, they can be clicked by whoever who also makes use of your personal computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the situation may become much more serious, and it will be much harder to deal with it without information loss. It is recommended to wipe out the viruses with antivirus programs as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Reftourcop.link pop-up advertisements?

The guide of Reftourcop.link adware clearing contains 2 parts. First, we need to exterminate the malware, and afterwards correct the effects of its activity. The removal task is really easy, due to the fact that it may be executed even with making use of Microsoft Defender – security program that is available on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nonetheless, as a result of its substantial resources usage, as well as some errors that can be pivotal for some kinds of users, Defender is frequently turned off by the users, so its usage is most likely impossible. Furthermore, a variety of trojan viruses have the ability to shut off the embedded antivirus. It is better to use the separated program that will not have such weakness.

I’d recommend you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware² – a well-proven antivirus tool that will definitely erase the viruses from your personal computer and create an impenetrable shield with a Proactive protection function. However, let’s deal with Reftourcop.link adware initially.

Removing Reftourcop.link 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.

• 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.

• When the scan is over, you may choose the action for each detected virus. For all files of Reftourcop.link malware the default option is “Delete”. Press “Apply” to finish the malware removal.

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. 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 web browsers are reset, you need to ensure that your web browser will connect the correct DNS while connecting to the website you want. Make a text file titled “hosts” on your desktop, after that open it and fill it with the following content³:

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 problem that makes things much harder to restore, particularly without the anti-malware program. Most of adware variants that are utilized to show you the Reftourcop.link pop-up advertisements are changing the deep browser configurations, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to fix your browser settings after your machine was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly collapse quickly. In certain cases, you will see no crash, however, huge lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 seconds, and then it will be back to the typical, until 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.

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.

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 Reftourcop.link Pop-ups?

Name: Reftourcop.link

Description: Reftourcop.link - 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 Reftourcop.link push notifications?” or “why do Reftourcop.link pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Reftourcop.link 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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1. More about pop-up advertisements on Wikipedia.
2. GridinSoft Anti-Malware overview and also the reasons why I advise it for malware removal.
3. Official Microsoft guide for hosts file reset.