Remove Toftheca.buzz Virus — How to Fix Guide

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Toftheca.buzz pop-up notices can show up out of the blue, covering the material of the website you went to or opening your browser when you don’t need it to be opened.

Clicking on the Toftheca.buzz ad may result in the injection of different malware or unwanted programs. In this guide, you will see the tutorial of Toftheca.buzz popups removal in a couple of ways, and also examining your computer for additional viruses presence.

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What are Toftheca.buzz pop-ups?

Toftheca.buzz popups are an outcome of adware action. Adware is a kind of malware that demonstrates to you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click ads, which generates a substantial volume of income for adware representatives. These promotions might consist of explicit content, or have a web link to harmful content/website, since adware maintainers have no purpose to examine the goodness of the material they are going to show – their solitary target is cash.

Toftheca.buzz push notification

Toftheca.buzz push notification.

Pop-up advertising itself is a very good, affordable and extremely successful marketing tool1. It allows the seller to attach the buyers’ interest to their website, and the buyers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they intend to purchase. When the person will receive a pop-up alert that the TV set he wishes to purchase is available at the online shop he/she saw previously with a 15% price cut, one will surely use this possibility and buy it. Considering the incredibly small cost for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising and marketing instrument is a much-loved thing amongst the marketing teams of huge online stores.

However, such a rewarding plan could not be missed by malware developers. Potential to demonstrate the popup advertisements by force to the targets of malware attack is an excellent basis for malevolent tricks with the popup ads. And Toftheca.buzz promotions is just one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a summary for the Toftheca.buzz
SiteToftheca.buzz
HostingAS14618 Amazon.com, Inc.
United States, Ashburn
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address52.20.131.174
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorTiwohi, Befom, Captchaglow
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Toftheca.buzz virus?

There are a lot of ways of becoming contaminated by the adware that lead to the Toftheca.buzz popups storm. A lion’s part of this computer virus incidents is after the free software or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Freeware can additionally be downloaded from the official site, and the adware is provided as a legitimate bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A number of people frequently use the uncertain programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, different apps that are free of cost, or perhaps hacked programs. Every one of these kinds of applications are dangerous, since it is quite easy to integrate a Toftheca.buzz 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.

Toftheca.buzz popup malware can also be concealed in the ad somewhere on the odd web page. Such sites are in most cases packed with intense and blinking ads, and their owners typically accept any kind of promos to be placed on their page. Thus, clicking such banners is a shot in the dark: only the advertisement contractor realizes what will occur when you click this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you may additionally receive something far more unsafe, like ransomware or coin miner; the large 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 Toftheca.buzz pop-up virus may cause a wide range of different problems on your personal computer. Distracting is not the single effect – pop-up notifications may show you the ads, where you are offered to get one more unknown program, or “a amazing security tool”. Scareware is usually distributed with the use of the last slogun. Potentially undesirable programs, in turn, can have spyware functionality. And it is quite hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a normal one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and dubious antiviruses, popup-related ads are also exploited as a spreading method by various trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such malware is 100% unpleasant, and can cost you hundreds or even thousands of dollars. And even if you are not clicking these ads, they can be clicked by whoever who also uses 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 get rid of the viruses with anti-malware applications as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Toftheca.buzz pop-up advertisements?

The tutorial of Toftheca.buzz adware removal contains 2 sections. Initially, we need to exterminate the malware, and afterwards deal with the consequences of its action. The removal procedure is quite simple, since it may be done even with the use of Microsoft Defender – anti-malware software that is present on all computers with Windows 8/10. However, because of its large resources utilization, along with some failures that can be crucial for some categories of users, Defender is often disabled by the users, so its usage is likely impossible. In addition, various trojan viruses have the ability to turn off the embedded antivirus. It is better to use the separated program that will not have such exposures.

I would certainly advise you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven antivirus device that will surely erase the viruses from your computer and also make an impenetrable shield with a Proactive protection feature. However, let’s deal with Toftheca.buzz adware first.

Removing Toftheca.buzz 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 Toftheca.buzz 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 browser will definitely be connected the right DNS while connecting to the website you want. Make a text file named “hosts” on your pc’s desktop, after that open it and fill it with the following content3:

# 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 problem that makes the things much harder to repair, specifically without the anti-malware program. A lot of adware variants that are used to show you the Toftheca.buzz pop-up promotions are changing the deep browser configurations, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to change your browser settings after your system was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will crash soon. Sometimes, you will see no crash, however, huge lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 seconds, and then it will be back to the normal, until 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 Toftheca.buzz Pop-ups?

Name: Toftheca.buzz

Description: Toftheca.buzz - 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 Toftheca.buzz push notifications?” or “why do Toftheca.buzz pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Toftheca.buzz 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 review and also the reasons why I recommend 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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