Remove Towerfriend1 Pop-up Virus — How to Remove?

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Towerfriend1 pop-up notices can appear out of the blue, covering the material of the page you visited or opening your web browser when you don’t wish it to be opened.

Clicking the Towerfriend1 advertisement can result in the injection of different malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the tutorial of Towerfriend1 popups removal in various manners, and also examining your computer for additional malware existence.

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What are Towerfriend1 pop-ups?

Towerfriend1 popups are an effect of adware presence. Adware is a type of malware that suggests you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click promotions, which produces a major amount of income for adware representatives. These ads might have sometimes shocking material, or have a link to harmful content/website, since adware maintainers have no purpose to check the goodness of the content they are going to reveal – their single target is cash.

Towerfriend1 push notification

Towerfriend1 push notification.

Pop-up promotions itself is an excellent, affordable and really efficient advertising instrument1. It enables the seller to attach the customers’ attention to their website, as well as the buyers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they intend to buy. When the person will get a pop-up notification that the TV set he desires to purchase is provided at the online shop he/she saw earlier with a 15% discount, one will undoubtedly use this chance and purchase it. Taking into consideration the extremely low cost for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising tool is a much-loved thing among the marketing departments of big online sellers.

However, such a rewarding scheme could not be missed by virus creators. Ability to demonstrate the popup advertisements forcibly to the targets of malware invasion is a great basis for evil-minded tricks with the popup promotions. And Towerfriend1.xyz promotions is just one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a short info for the Towerfriend1 site
SiteTowerfriend1.xyz
HostingAS15317 Serverel Inc.
United States, San Jose
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address173.214.240.15
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorWww, Ligamedia, Executivej
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Towerfriend1 virus?

There are a lot of ways of becoming infected by the adware that trigger the Towerfriend1 popups tornado. A lion’s part of this virus incidents is after the free software or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Freeware can also be downloaded from the official website, and the adware is provided as a legal bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A huge amount of people oftentimes utilize the unreliable programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, various apps that are free of cost, or even hacked programs. All of these kinds of applications are risky, due to the fact that it is very easy to include a Towerfriend1 malware under the cover of part of the license hacking script, or as a part of the self-made algoritm within the Windows optimization tool.

Towerfriend1 popup malware may also be concealed in the advertisement somewhere on the odd web page. Such websites are typically packed with colorful and blinking advertisements, and their proprietors often accept any type of promotions to be placed on their page. Therefore, clicking such banners is a shot in the dark: only the advertisement contractor knows what will happen when you press this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you may also receive something far more dangerous, like ransomware or coin miner; the substantial share of coin miners distribution is exactly after the malicious ads.

People dislike popups

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

Potentially undesirable applications, like Towerfriend1 popup virus can cause a lot of different troubles on your personal computer. Distracting is not the only effect – pop-up notifications can present you the banners, where you are offered to get one more dubious program, or “a perfect security tool”. Scareware is often distributed under the last motto. Potentially unwanted programs, in turn, can have spyware functions. And it is very hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a good one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and pseudo antiviruses, popup-related ads are also chosen as a distribution method by different trojan viruses, for instance – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such viruses is 100% unpleasant, and can cost you several hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not interacting with these ads, they can be clicked by someone who also uses your personal computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the situation can become much more serious, and it will be much harder to solve it without information loss. It is recommended to remove the viruses with anti-malware applications as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Towerfriend1 pop-up advertisements?

The manual of Towerfriend1 adware elimination contains 2 sections. Initially, we need to deal with the malware, and after that take care of the results of its activity. The elimination procedure is really easy, because it may be executed even with the use of Microsoft Defender – security tool that is present on all computers with Windows 8/10. However, due to its large resources usage, as well as some defects that may be serious for some groups of individuals, Defender is oftentimes disabled by the users, so its utilization is most likely impossible. What’s more, various trojan viruses have the ability to shut off the embedded antivirus. It is much better to use the separated program that will not have such exposures.

I would certainly suggest you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven security device that will undoubtedly remove the malware from your personal computer and also make an invulnerable shield with a Proactive protection feature. However, let’s take care of Towerfriend1 adware initially.

Removing Towerfriend1 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 Towerfriend1 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 make sure that your browser will definitely be connected the accurate DNS while connecting to the web page you want. Make a text file titled “hosts” on your computer’s desktop, then 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 trouble that makes the things much harder to restore, especially without the anti-malware software. The majority of adware versions that are utilized to show you the Towerfriend1 pop-up promotions are modifying the deep browser configurations, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to change your browser settings after your computer was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly crash soon. Sometimes, you will see no crash, however, large lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 seconds, and after that it will be back to the normal, till 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 Towerfriend1 Pop-ups?

Name: Towerfriend1

Description: Towerfriend1 - 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 Towerfriend1.xyz push notifications?” or “why do Towerfriend1.xyz pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Towerfriend1 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 elimination.
  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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