Remove Shield-fordesktop Pop-up Ads — How to Fix Gude

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Shield-fordesktop pop-up alerts can show up out of the blue, covering the post of the page you visited or opening your web browser when you do not wish it to be opened.

Clicking the Shield-fordesktop advertisement may cause the injection of various malware or unwanted programs. In this guide, you will see the guideline of Shield-fordesktop popups clearing in various manners, and also checking your PC for other malware existence.

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What are Shield-fordesktop pop-ups?

Shield-fordesktop popups are an outcome of adware activity. Adware is a type of malware that demonstrates to you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click promotions, which generates a massive volume of earnings for adware representatives. These ads may have explicit information, or have a web link to malicious content/website, considering that adware maintainers have no reason to examine the goodness of the material they are going to show – their single target is money.

Shield-fordesktop push notification

Shield-fordesktop push notification.

Pop-up marketing itself is a very good, cheap and really successful advertising solution1. It makes it possible for the vendor to attach the buyers’ interest to their website, as well as the customers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they want to buy. When the consumer will get a pop-up notification that the TV set he desires to purchase is provided at the online store he/she visited earlier with a 15% discount, one will surely use this opportunity and get it. Taking into consideration the exceptionally low price for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising and marketing instrument is a favorite thing among the advertising departments of huge online retailers.

However, such a profitable system could not be missed by malware developers. Potential to show the popup ads by force to the victims of malware invasion is an ideal basis for evil-minded tricks with the popup ads. And Shield-fordesktop.com promotions is among hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a info for the Shield-fordesktop
SiteShield-fordesktop.com
HostingAS59253 Leaseweb Asia Pacific pte. ltd.
Singapore, Singapore
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address23.106.248.15
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorHehighurs, Trusted, Notadvertise
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Shield-fordesktop virus?

There are a huge amount of ways of becoming infected by the adware that trigger the Shield-fordesktop popups storm. A lion’s part of this malware instances is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Freeware may additionally be downloaded from the official website, and the adware is delivered as a legit bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A plenty of people oftentimes utilize the unreliable programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, various apps that are free, or even hacked programs. Every one of these sorts of applications are dangerous, since it is very simple to build in a Shield-fordesktop 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.

Shield-fordesktop popup malware may also be hidden in the ad somewhere on the strange website. Such websites are usually filled with bright and blinking advertisements, and their owners typically approve any promotions to be posted on their web page. For this reason, clicking such banners is a shot in the dark: only the ad contractor realizes what will occur when you click this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you may additionally get something much more dangerous, like ransomware or coin miner; the large share of coin miners distribution is exactly after the malicious promotions.

People dislike popups

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

Potentially unwanted programs, like Shield-fordesktop popup virus can initiate a variety of different troubles on your PC. Distracting is not the only problem – pop-up notifications can show you the banners, where you are offered to get one more strange program, or “a effective security tool”. Scareware is often distributed with the last motto. Potentially unwanted applications, in turn, may have spyware functionality. And it is quite hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a good one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and fake antiviruses, popup-related promotions are also chosen as a distribution way by different trojan viruses, for example – 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 interacting with these promotions, they may be clicked by someone who also makes use of your computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the things may become much more serious, and it will be much harder to deal with it without information loss. It is recommended to remove the viruses with antivirus applications as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Shield-fordesktop pop-up advertisements?

The tutorial of Shield-fordesktop adware elimination consists of 2 parts. First, we need to exterminate the malware, and then repair the results of its action. The elimination task is quite simple, due to the fact that it may be performed even with making use of Microsoft Defender – anti-virus program that is available on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nonetheless, due to its huge resources consumption, as well as some bugs that may be critical for some kinds of users, Defender is frequently turned off by the users, so its usage is probably impossible. Furthermore, different trojan viruses have the ability to disable the embedded antivirus. It is much better to make use of the separated program that will not have such vulnerabilities.

I’d advise you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven security tool that will undoubtedly eliminate the malware from your personal computer and also create an invulnerable shield with a Proactive protection feature. But let’s take care of Shield-fordesktop adware first.

Removing Shield-fordesktop 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 Shield-fordesktop 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 be connected the appropriate DNS while connecting to the web page you need. Create a text file named “hosts” on your computer’s desktop, then 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.

Nonetheless, there is one trouble that makes things much more difficult to repair, specifically without the anti-malware program. Most of adware variations that are used to show you the Shield-fordesktop pop-up ads are adjusting the deep browser setups, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to change your browser settings after your PC was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will crash quickly. In some cases, you will see no crash, but huge lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 seconds, and after that it will be back to the typical, until you attempt to open settings once 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 Shield-fordesktop Pop-ups?

Name: Shield-fordesktop

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