Remove Sofid.live Pop-up Virus — How to Remove?

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Sofid.live pop-up alerts can appear out of the blue, covering the content of the page you visited or opening your browser when you don’t want it to be opened.

Clicking the Sofid.live promotion can cause the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the tutorial of Sofid.live popups clearing in several manners, and also inspecting your system for extra malware presence.

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What are Sofid.live pop-ups?

Sofid.live popups are a consequence of adware action. Adware is a type of malware that presents you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click promotions, which generates a substantial amount of earnings for adware suppliers. These advertisements might contain explicit information, or have a link to malevolent content/website, because adware maintainers have no purpose to inspect the goodness of the web content they are going to show – their single target is cash.

Sofid.live push notification

Sofid.live push notification.

Pop-up promotions itself is a good, low-priced and also extremely effective advertising solution1. It enables the vendor to attach the buyers’ interest to their site, and the buyers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they wish to buy. When the customer will get a pop-up alert that the TV set he wishes to buy is provided at the online store he/she visited previously with a 15% price cut, one will undoubtedly use this possibility and get it. Considering the extremely low price for the popups and their targeting, such a promotion and marketing instrument is a favorite thing amongst the advertising departments of large internet retail stores.

Nonetheless, such a rewarding strategy could not be missed by malware creators. Ability to show the popup ads forcibly to the people of malware attack is a great basis for malicious tricks with the popup promotions. And Sofid.live ads is among hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a info for the Sofid.live
Site Sofid.live
Hosting AS14061 DigitalOcean, LLC
United States, North Bergen
Infection Type Adware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address 157.230.4.182
Symptoms Annoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behavior Appcloudcloud, G0wow, Zabanit
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Sofid.live virus?

There are a plenty of methods of becoming contaminated by the adware that result in the Sofid.live 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 official site, and the adware is presented as a legal bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A plenty of people regularly utilize the uncertain programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, different tools that are free, or even hacked programs. All of these kinds of software are dangerous, because it is extremely easy to include a Sofid.live 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.

Sofid.live popup malware may also be concealed in the ad somewhere on the unusual website. Such websites are in most cases packed with bright and blinking ads, and their owners typically permit any type of promotions to be placed on their page. Therefore, clicking on such banners is a shot in the dark: only the advertisement contractor realizes what will happen when you click this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you may additionally receive something far more dangerous, like ransomware or coin miner; the big 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 unwanted programs, like Sofid.live pop-up virus can cause a wide range of problems on your personal computer. Distracting is not the single effect – pop-ups may show you the promotions, where you are offered to get one more strange program, or “a amazing security tool”. Scareware is usually spread with the use of the last motto. Potentially undesirable applications, in turn, may have spyware functionality. And it is very hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a normal one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and pseudo antiviruses, popup-related advertisements are also exploited as a spreading way 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 ads, they may be clicked by whoever who also makes use of your PC – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the situation can become much more serious, and it will be much harder to solve it without data and money loss. It is recommended to get rid of the viruses with anti-malware programs as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Sofid.live pop-up advertisements?

The tutorial of Sofid.live adware clearing includes 2 parts. Initially, we need to remove the malware, and after that repair the effects of its action. The elimination task is pretty simple, since it may be executed even with making use of Microsoft Defender – anti-malware program that is present on all computers with Windows 8/10. However, as a result of its substantial resources utilization, along with some problems that can be serious for some types of individuals, Defender is often disabled by the users, so its use is likely impossible. Additionally, various trojan viruses are able to switch off the embedded antivirus. It is better to use the separated program that will not have such exposures.

I’d suggest you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven anti-malware tool that will surely exterminate the viruses from your PC and create an impenetrable shield with a Proactive protection function. But let’s handle Sofid.live adware initially.

Removing Sofid.live 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 Sofid.live 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 definitely connect the accurate DNS while connecting to the site you need. Make a text file titled “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.

Nevertheless, there is one problem that makes the things much more difficult to fix, particularly without the anti-malware program. A lot of adware variants that are utilized to show you the Sofid.live 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 PC was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly collapse quickly. In certain cases, you will see no crash, however, large lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 seconds, and afterwards it will be back to the normal, until you try 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 Sofid.live Pop-ups?

Name: Sofid.live

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