Remove Say-soft Pop-up Virus — How to Remove?

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Say-soft pop-up notifications may appear out of the blue, covering the content of the page you went to or opening your web browser when you don’t desire it to be opened.

Clicking on the Say-soft promotion may result in the injection of various malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the manual of Say-soft popups clearing in several ways, as well as examining your system for extra malware presence.

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What are Say-soft pop-ups?

Say-soft popups are an outcome of adware presence. Adware is a type of malware that suggests you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click ads, which creates a significant amount of income for adware distributors. These advertisements may contain sometimes shocking content, or have a web link to malicious content/website, considering that adware maintainers have no reason to inspect the goodness of the material they are going to show – their single target is money.

Say-soft push notification

Say-soft push notification.

Pop-up promotions itself is a very good, low-cost and also very effective advertising method1. It allows the vendor to attach the customers’ interest to their website, and the customers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they want to buy. When the person will receive a pop-up notification that the TV set he likes to buy is available at the online shop he/she visited earlier with a 15% discount, one will certainly use this possibility and buy it. Considering the exceptionally small cost for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising and marketing method is a favourite thing amidst the marketing teams of huge internet stores.

Nonetheless, such a profitable system could not be missed by virus developers. Option to show the popup ads by force to the victims of malware invasion is a great basis for evil-minded manipulations with the popup advertisements. And Say-soft.com promotions is just one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a short details for the Say-soft
SiteSay-soft.com
HostingAS13335 Cloudflare, Inc.
United States, San Francisco
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address172.67.200.50
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorWatchadzfree, Protectzone, Poshukach
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Say-soft virus?

There are a plenty of ways of getting infected by the adware that trigger the Say-soft popups storm. 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 main web page, and the adware is offered as a legit bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A huge amount of users frequently use the unreliable programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, different apps that are free of cost, and even hacked programs. All of these types of software are unsafe, due to the fact that it is very simple to integrate a Say-soft 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.

Say-soft popup virus can additionally be hidden in the promotion somewhere on the odd website. Such sites are in most cases full of bright and blinking advertisements, and their owners generally permit any type of promotions to be placed on their page. Thus, clicking such banners is a shot in the dark: only the ad contractor knows what will occur when you press this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you may also receive something much more risky, like ransomware or coin miner; the substantial share of coin miners circulation is exactly after the malicious promotions.

People dislike popups

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

Potentially undesirable programs, like Say-soft pop-up virus can cause a lot of different troubles on your computer. Distracting is not the only problem – pop-up notifications may show you the banners, where you are offered to download another dubious program, or “a perfect anti-malware tool”. Scareware is usually spread under the last motto. Potentially undesirable applications, in turn, may have spyware functionality. And it is very hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a good one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and pseudo antiviruses, popup-related ads are also exploited as a spreading method by different trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of actions of such malware is 100% unwanted, and can cost you hundreds or even thousands of dollars. And even if you are not tapping these ads, they can be clicked by someone who also uses your computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the situation may become much more serious, and it will be much harder to deal with it without data and money loss. It is recommended to wipe out the viruses with anti-malware programs as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Say-soft pop-up advertisements?

The guide of Say-soft adware clearing consists of 2 sections. Initially, we need to get rid of the malware, and then correct the effects of its action. The removal procedure is really easy, because it can be performed even with making use of Microsoft Defender – anti-malware tool that is available on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, as a result of its substantial resources consumption, as well as some bugs that may be serious for some types of users, Defender is often turned off by the users, so its use is most likely impossible. Furthermore, different trojan viruses have the ability to switch off the embedded antivirus. It is far better to use the separated program that will not have such exposures.

I’d advise you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven security tool that will surely remove the malware from your system and also make an impenetrable shield with a Proactive protection function. But let’s manage Say-soft adware initially.

Removing Say-soft 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 Say-soft 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 web page you need. Create a text file named “hosts” on your pc’s 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.

Nonetheless, there is one issue that makes things much more difficult to repair, especially without the anti-malware software. The majority of adware variants that are used to show you the Say-soft pop-up promotions are adjusting 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 certainly collapse quickly. In some cases, you will see no crash, but significant lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 secs, and then it will be back to the normal, until 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 Say-soft Pop-ups?

Name: Say-soft

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