Remove Vpnservice.me Pop-up Ads — How to Fix Gude

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Vpnservice.me pop-up notifications can show up unexpectedly, covering the subject of the page you visited or opening your browser when you do not want it to be opened.

Clicking on the Vpnservice.me promotion can lead to the injection of various malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the guide of Vpnservice.me popups clearing in a couple of manners, and also checking your personal computer for additional viruses existence.

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What are Vpnservice.me pop-ups?

Quick reference

When comparing the prices of these services on average for an average Canadian man on the Internet in the United States, the most common price difference between US$10.99 (in Canada) and US$20.99 (in the United Kingdom) is between $3.99 and $6.19, which gives a discount on US$20.99, which also translates to a 20% discount.

A typical Canadian who has a couple of TV shows on his TV, as well as a couple of movies available on a variety of streaming services, may be more willing to invest to have a good pop-up alert, while an average US$20.99 user may be willing to take an active part in the promotion via his Youtube, Apple TV, Android phone or other devices.

Vpnservice.me popups are a result of adware presence. Adware is a kind of malware that suggests you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which generates a large amount of income for adware distributors. These ads may include sometimes shocking composition, or have a link to harmful content/website, due to the fact that adware maintainers have no purpose to check the goodness of the material they are going to show – their solitary target is cash.

Vpnservice.me push notification

Vpnservice.me push notification.

Pop-up marketing itself is a very good, low-cost and also really efficient marketing method1. It makes it possible for the vendor to attach the buyers’ interest to their website, as well as the buyers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they want to purchase. When the consumer 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% discount, one will surely use this opportunity and buy it. Considering the extremely small cost for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising and marketing method is a much-loved thing amidst the marketing teams of huge internet stores.

Nevertheless, such a successful scheme could not be missed by virus creators. Option to demonstrate the popup advertisements by force to the victims of malware invasion is a great basis for malicious manipulations with the popup promotions. And Vpnservice.me promotions is just one of hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a short summary for the Vpnservice.me site
Site Vpnservice.me
Hosting AS14061 DigitalOcean, LLC
United States, North Bergen
Infection Type Adware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address 142.93.4.215
Symptoms Annoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behavior Kcvity, Pumesh, Coolxx
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Vpnservice.me virus?

There are a plenty of methods of getting contaminated by the adware that create the Vpnservice.me popups tornado. A lion’s part of this computer virus cases is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Free software may also be downloaded from the main website, and the adware is supplied as a legit bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A number of people often use the uncertain programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, various tools that are free, and even hacked programs. Every one of these types of applications are risky, because it is very easy to include a Vpnservice.me 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.

Vpnservice.me popup virus can also be hidden in the advertisement somewhere on the odd site. Such web pages are typically filled with colorful and blinking advertisements, and their owners generally permit any kind of promos to be placed on their page. Hence, clicking such banners is a shot in the dark: only the ad provider realizes what will happen when you click this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you may also get something much more threatening, 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 Vpnservice.me popup virus can provoke a wide range of different problems on your computer. Distracting is not the only problem – pop-ups may display you the advertisements, where you are offered to download one more dubious program, or “a effective anti-malware tool”. Scareware is usually distributed under the last slogun. Potentially undesirable programs, in turn, can have spyware functions. And it is very hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a normal one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and pseudo antiviruses, popup-related ads are also exploited as a spreading method by various trojan viruses, for instance – coin miners. The consequences of actions of such viruses is 100% unpleasant, and can cost you several hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not tapping these promotions, they can be clicked by whoever who also makes use of your 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 wipe out the viruses with anti-malware programs as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Vpnservice.me pop-up advertisements?

The guide of Vpnservice.me adware elimination includes 2 sections. First, we need to deal with the malware, and after that deal with the effects of its activity. The elimination procedure is really easy, because it may be done even with the use of Microsoft Defender – anti-malware tool that is available on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nonetheless, because of its significant resources consumption, as well as some bugs that can be pivotal for some types of users, Defender is frequently disabled by the users, so its usage is likely impossible. Additionally, a variety of trojan viruses are able to turn off the embedded antivirus. It is much better to use the separated program that will not have such weakness.

I’d advise you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven anti-malware tool that will certainly eliminate the viruses from your computer and also make an invulnerable shield with a Proactive protection feature. But let’s handle Vpnservice.me adware initially.

Removing Vpnservice.me 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 Vpnservice.me 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 web browser will connect the correct DNS while connecting to the web page you want. Create a text file titled “hosts” on your pc’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 problem that makes the things a lot harder to fix, especially without the anti-malware software. A lot of adware variations that are utilized to show you the Vpnservice.me pop-up advertisements are modifying the deep browser configurations, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to change your browser settings after your machine was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will crash soon. Sometimes, you will see no crash, however, significant lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 seconds, and then it will be back to the typical, till 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 Vpnservice.me Pop-ups?

Name: Vpnservice.me

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