How to remove Specific-Message pop-ups? — Fix Guide

Specific-Message pop-up alerts can appear out of the blue, covering the material of the page you checked or opening your web browser when you don’t desire it to be opened.

Clicking on the Specific-Message promotion can result in the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the tutorial of Specific-Message popups removal in several manners, as well as checking your personal computer for other viruses presence.

It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!

Removing Specific-Message manually may take hours and may damage your PC in the process. I recommend you to download GridinSoft Anti-Malware for threats removal. Allows to complete scan and cure your PC during the trial period.

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What are Specific-Message pop-ups?

Specific-Message popups are a consequence of adware action. Adware is a sort of malware that presents you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click ads, which generates a large amount of income for adware distributors. These promotions might include explicit content, or have a web link to malicious content/website, due to the fact that adware maintainers have no reason to inspect the goodness of the content they are going to reveal – their single target is money.

Specific-Message push notification.

Pop-up advertising itself is a good, low-cost and also really effective marketing method¹. It enables the vendor to link the customers’ interest to their website, as well as the buyers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they intend to purchase. When the person will receive a pop-up notification that the TV set he desires to purchase is available at the online shop he/she checked out previously with a 15% price cut, one will certainly use this possibility and get it. Taking into consideration the very low cost for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising method is a much-loved thing amongst the marketing teams of big online retailers.

Nevertheless, such a profitable plan could not be missed by malware developers. Option to demonstrate the popup ads forcibly to the victims of malware invasion is a perfect basis for malevolent adjustments with the popup advertisements. And Specific-message.xyz advertisements is one of hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a summary for the Specific-Message

How have I got the Specific-Message virus?

There are a lot of ways of becoming contaminated by the adware that create the Specific-Message popups tornado. A lion’s part of this malware cases is after the free software or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Freeware can likewise be downloaded from the official website, and the adware is delivered as a legitimate bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A plenty of individuals regularly work with the uncertain programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, a wide range of tools that are free, and even hacked programs. Every one of these sorts of applications are unsafe, since it is very easy to build in a Specific-Message 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.

Specific-Message popup malware may likewise be concealed in the ad somewhere on the strange site. Such web pages are usually packed with intense and blinking advertisements, and their proprietors generally approve any kind of promotions to be published on their page. Thus, clicking on such banners is a risky thing: only the ad provider knows what will happen when you press this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you may additionally receive something much more hazardous, like ransomware or coin miner; the big share of coin miners distribution is exactly after the malicious ads.

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

Potentially undesirable programs, like Specific-Message popup virus can provoke a variety of troubles on your personal computer. Distracting is not the only effect – pop-up notifications can show you the promotions, where you are offered to download another dubious program, or “a effective security tool”. Scareware is often distributed under the last motto. Potentially undesirable applications, in turn, can have spyware functions. And it is very hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a good one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and dubious antiviruses, popup-related advertisements are also exploited as a distribution way by various trojan viruses, for instance – 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 interacting with these banners, they can be clicked by whoever who also uses 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 remove the viruses with antivirus applications as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Specific-Message pop-up advertisements?

The guide of Specific-Message adware removal includes 2 sections. First, we need to deal with the malware, and after that take care of the results of its activity. The elimination task is very easy, due to the fact that it can be executed even with using Microsoft Defender – anti-virus program that is available on all computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, because of its significant resources consumption, as well as some bugs that may be pivotal for some kinds of individuals, Defender is often disabled by the users, so its utilization is probably impossible. Moreover, various trojan viruses have the ability to turn off the embedded antivirus. It is far better to make use of the separated program that will not have such vulnerabilities.

I’d recommend you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware² – a well-proven security tool that will definitely erase the viruses from your computer and also create an impenetrable shield with a Proactive protection feature. But let’s deal with Specific-Message adware first.

Removing Specific-Message 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.

• 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.

• When the scan is over, you may choose the action for each detected virus. For all files of Specific-Message malware the default option is “Delete”. Press “Apply” to finish the malware removal.

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. 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. In the next screen, find the “Refresh Firefox” option :

After choosing this option, you will see the next message :

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 make sure that your browser will be connected the right DNS while connecting to the web page you want. Create a text file named “hosts” on your computer’s desktop, then open it and fill it with the following text³:

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 problem that makes the things a lot more difficult to fix, especially without the anti-malware software. The majority of adware variations that are used to show you the Specific-Message pop-up promotions are altering the deep browser configurations, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to change your browser settings after your PC was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will collapse quickly. In certain cases, you will see no crash, but huge lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 secs, and then it will be back to the typical, till you attempt 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.

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.

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 Specific-Message Pop-ups?

Name: Specific-Message

Description: Specific-Message - 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 Specific-message.xyz push notifications?” or “why do Specific-message.xyz pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Specific-Message 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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1. More about pop-up ads on Wikipedia.
2. GridinSoft Anti-Malware review and also the reasons why I suggest it for malware elimination.
3. Official Microsoft guide for hosts file reset.