Remove Safehomestar.info Pop-up Virus — How to Remove?

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Safehomestar.info pop-up notices may appear 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 the Safehomestar.info promotion can result in the injection of various malware or unwanted programs. In this article, you will see the guide of Safehomestar.info popups clearing in various methods, as well as inspecting your PC for extra malware existence.

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What are Safehomestar.info pop-ups?

Safehomestar.info popups are an effect of adware presence. Adware is a type of malware that suggests you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which generates a large amount of revenue for adware distributors. These ads might include sometimes shocking material, or have a link to malicious content/website, because adware maintainers have no purpose to check the goodness of the material they are going to show – their single target is cash.

Safehomestar.info push notification

Safehomestar.info push notification.

Pop-up advertising itself is an excellent, low-cost and very effective marketing method1. It allows the seller to attach the buyers’ attention to their website, as well as the customers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they want to purchase. When the person will receive a pop-up alert that the TV set he wishes to purchase is offered at the online store he/she saw previously with a 15% price cut, one will definitely use this opportunity and purchase it. Considering the exceptionally small cost for the popups and their targeting, such a promotion and marketing method is a favourite thing amidst the advertising departments of big internet sellers.

Nevertheless, such a rewarding system could not be missed by virus creators. Ability to show the popup advertisements forcibly to the targets of malware attack is a perfect basis for malevolent adjustments with the popup ads. And Safehomestar.info ads is just one of hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a details for the Safehomestar.info site
SiteSafehomestar.info
HostingAS13335 Cloudflare, Inc.
United States, San Francisco
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address172.67.159.248
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorN1topserch, Cleargreenline, Greenskymotions
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Safehomestar.info virus?

There are a huge amount of methods of becoming infected by the adware that lead to the Safehomestar.info popups storm. A lion’s part of this malware incidents is after the free software or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Freeware may likewise be downloaded from the main site, and the adware is presented as a legitimate bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A lot of users regularly work with the uncertain programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, different utilities that are free, and even hacked programs. Every one of these sorts of applications are unsafe, because it is very simple to include a Safehomestar.info malware under the guise of part of the license hacking script, or as a part of the self-made algoritm within the Windows optimization tool.

Safehomestar.info popup malware may also be hidden in the promotion somewhere on the strange website. Such sites are typically full of colorful and blinking advertisements, and their proprietors generally accept any promotions to be placed on their page. Hence, clicking on such banners is a shot in the dark: only the advertisement contractor realizes what will occur when you click this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you may additionally get something a lot more risky, like ransomware or coin miner; the substantial share of coin miners distribution 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 applications, like Safehomestar.info popup virus can cause a lot of troubles on your computer. Distracting is not the single problem – pop-ups may present you the ads, where you are offered to download another strange program, or “a effective anti-malware tool”. Scareware is usually distributed under the last motto. Potentially unwanted applications, in turn, can have spyware functionality. And it is quite hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a legit one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and fake antiviruses, popup-related ads are also exploited as a spreading method by various trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of actions of such viruses is 100% unpleasant, and can cost you hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not clicking these promotions, they may be clicked by someone who also uses your computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the things may become much more serious, and it will be much harder to solve it without data loss. It is recommended to remove the viruses with antivirus programs as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Safehomestar.info pop-up advertisements?

The tutorial of Safehomestar.info adware clearing contains 2 sections. First, we need to get rid of the malware, and after that correct the results of its action. The removal procedure is pretty easy, because it can be executed even with the use of Microsoft Defender – anti-virus software that is available on all computers with Windows 8/10. Nonetheless, because of its significant resources utilization, as well as some bugs that may be pivotal for some types of users, Defender is frequently disabled by the users, so its usage is most likely impossible. In addition, a variety of trojan viruses are able to turn off the embedded antivirus. It is much better to make use of the separated program that will not have such exposures.

I’d recommend you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven antivirus tool that will surely erase the viruses from your system and make an invulnerable shield with a Proactive protection feature. But let’s manage Safehomestar.info adware first.

Removing Safehomestar.info 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 Safehomestar.info 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 definitely be connected the proper DNS while connecting to the website you need. Make a text file titled “hosts” on your pc’s desktop, after that open it and fill it with the following text3:

# 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.

Nevertheless, there is one problem that makes the things a lot more difficult to fix, particularly without the anti-malware software. A lot of adware variants that are used to show you the Safehomestar.info pop-up advertisements are modifying 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 crash soon. In some cases, you will see no crash, however, large lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 secs, and afterwards 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.

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 Safehomestar.info Pop-ups?

Name: Safehomestar.info

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