How to remove Safeprotect.info pop-ups? — Fix Guide

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Safeprotect.info pop-up alerts may appear unexpectedly, covering the post of the site you visited or opening your browser when you don’t desire it to be opened.

Clicking on the Safeprotect.info promotion can lead to the injection of various malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the manual of Safeprotect.info popups clearing in multiple methods, as well as examining your personal computer for other malware presence.

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What are Safeprotect.info pop-ups?

Safeprotect.info popups are a consequence of adware activity. Adware is a type of malware that presents you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which produces a significant amount of income for adware representatives. These ads may have sometimes shocking composition, or have a web link to malevolent content/website, considering that adware maintainers have no purpose to examine the goodness of the content they are going to reveal – their solitary target is money.

Safeprotect.info push notification

Safeprotect.info push notification.

Pop-up marketing itself is a very good, low-cost and really effective advertising instrument1. It enables the vendor to attach the buyers’ interest to their site, as well as the customers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they intend to purchase. When the customer will get a pop-up notification that the TV set he wishes to buy is available at the online shop he/she visited earlier with a 15% discount, one will certainly use this possibility and get it. Taking into consideration the extremely low cost for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising instrument is a favorite thing among the advertising departments of big online sellers.

Nonetheless, such a successful plan could not be missed by malware developers. Ability to show the popup ads by force to the people of malware invasion is an ideal basis for evil-minded tricks with the popup promotions. And Safeprotect.info promotions is just one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a details for the Safeprotect.info site
Site Safeprotect.info
Hosting AS29182 JSC IOT
Russia, Moscow
Infection Type Adware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address 37.230.115.34
Symptoms Annoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behavior Wenaso, Ewafur, Global
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Safeprotect.info virus?

There are a huge amount of ways of becoming contaminated by the adware that trigger the Safeprotect.info popups tornado. A lion’s part of this malware cases is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Free software can additionally be downloaded from the main web page, and the adware is presented as a legitimate bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A number of people oftentimes make use of the uncertain programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, a wide range of apps that are free, or even hacked programs. Every one of these kinds of programs are risky, since it is very easy to integrate a Safeprotect.info malware under the guise of part of the license hacking script, or as a component of the self-made algoritm within the Windows optimization tool.

Safeprotect.info popup virus may likewise be concealed in the advertisement somewhere on the strange website. Such websites are usually filled with colorful and blinking ads, and their owners typically permit any promos to be placed on their page. For this reason, clicking such banners is a shot in the dark: only the ad contractor realizes what will occur when you press this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you can additionally get something a lot more threatening, like ransomware or coin miner; the large 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 unwanted programs, like Safeprotect.info pop-up virus may cause a wide range of different problems on your PC. Distracting is not the only effect – pop-up notifications may present you the advertisements, where you are offered to download another strange program, or “a amazing anti-malware tool”. Scareware is usually distributed under the last slogun. Potentially undesirable programs, in turn, may have spyware functions. And it is quite hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a good one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and fake antiviruses, popup-related ads are also exploited as a spreading way by different 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 advertisements, they can be clicked by someone who also makes use of your PC – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the things may become much more serious, and it will be much harder to deal with it without data loss. It is recommended to get rid of the viruses with antivirus applications as soon as possible.

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

The guide of Safeprotect.info adware elimination includes 2 parts. Initially, we need to eliminate the malware, and after that repair the effects of its activity. The elimination process is pretty simple, due to the fact that it can be executed even with making use of Microsoft Defender – anti-virus tool that is available on all computers with Windows 8/10. However, due to its significant resources utilization, along with some problems that can be pivotal for some groups of individuals, Defender is frequently disabled by the users, so its usage is probably impossible. In addition, a variety of trojan viruses are able to disable the embedded antivirus. It is far better to make use of the separated program that will not have such weakness.

I’d recommend you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven anti-malware tool that will definitely wipe out the viruses from your system and make an invulnerable shield with a Proactive protection function. But let’s deal with Safeprotect.info adware first.

Removing Safeprotect.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 Safeprotect.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 web browsers are reset, you need to ensure that your browser will be connected the proper DNS while connecting to the website you want. Make a text file named “hosts” on your 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.

However, there is one trouble that makes things a lot harder to fix, particularly without the anti-malware software. A lot of adware variants that are utilized to show you the Safeprotect.info pop-up promotions are changing the deep browser setups, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to fix your browser settings after your system was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will crash quickly. In some cases, you will see no crash, however, huge lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 secs, and then it will be back to the normal, 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 Safeprotect.info Pop-ups?

Name: Safeprotect.info

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