Remove Vpntag Virus — How to Fix Guide

Vpntag pop-up alerts can appear unexpectedly, covering the subject of the site you went to or opening your web browser when you don’t desire it to be opened.

Clicking on the Vpntag ad can trigger the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this article, you will see the guideline of Vpntag popups removal in several methods, as well as examining your personal computer for additional malware presence.

It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!

Removing Vpntag 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 Vpntag pop-ups?

Vpntag popups are an effect of adware presence. Adware is a type of malware that shows you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click promotions, which generates a significant volume of earnings for adware representatives. These ads might include sometimes shocking composition, or have a link to malicious content/website, considering that adware maintainers have no purpose to inspect the goodness of the web content they are going to reveal – their solitary target is money.

Vpntag push notification.

Pop-up advertising itself is a very good, low-cost and extremely productive advertising method¹. It enables the seller to link the customers’ interest to their site, as well as the buyers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they wish to buy. When the consumer will get a pop-up alert that the TV set he wishes to buy is provided at the online store he/she visited earlier with a 15% discount, one will definitely use this possibility and buy it. Considering the exceptionally low cost for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising and marketing instrument is a favourite thing amongst the advertising departments of big online retailers.

However, such a successful strategy could not be missed by virus developers. Option to demonstrate the popup advertisements by force to the people of malware attack is a great basis for malicious tricks with the popup promotions. And Vpntag.xyz ads is among hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a short info for the Vpntag

How have I got the Vpntag virus?

There are a number of ways of becoming infected by the adware that result in the Vpntag popups tornado. A lion’s part of this malware incidents is after the free software or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Free software can likewise be downloaded from the official website, and the adware is supplied as a legal bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A lot of people regularly utilize the uncertain programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, a wide range of utilities that are free of cost, and even hacked programs. Every one of these sorts of programs are risky, because it is quite simple to integrate a Vpntag malware under the guise of part of the license hacking script, or as a part of the self-made algoritm inside of the Windows optimization tool.

Vpntag popup virus may also be concealed in the advertisement somewhere on the unusual website. Such sites are usually packed with bright and blinking advertisements, and their owners usually approve any type of promos to be published on their page. Hence, clicking such banners is a risky thing: only the advertisement contractor knows what will occur when you click this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you may additionally get something a lot more threatening, like ransomware or coin miner; the large share of coin miners circulation is exactly after the malicious promotions.

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

Potentially undesirable applications, like Vpntag popup virus may initiate a wide range of different problems on your personal computer. Distracting is not the only problem – pop-up notifications may show you the advertisements, where you are offered to get one more dubious application, or “a perfect security tool”. Scareware is often spread under the last motto. Potentially undesirable applications, in turn, may have spyware functionality. And it is pretty hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a legit one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and fake antiviruses, popup-related banners are also chosen as a spreading way by different trojan viruses, for instance – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such malware is 100% unwanted, and can cost you hundreds or even thousands of dollars. And even if you are not clicking these advertisements, they may be clicked by whoever who also uses your personal computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the things may become much more serious, and it will be much harder to solve it without information loss. It is recommended to remove the viruses with antivirus programs as soon as possible.

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

The manual of Vpntag adware clearing contains 2 parts. First, we need to get rid of the malware, and after that fix the effects of its activity. The elimination procedure is quite easy, due to the fact that it may be performed even with using Microsoft Defender – security program that is available on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, because of its significant resources utilization, along with some errors that may be serious for some types of users, Defender is oftentimes turned off by the users, so its usage is most likely impossible. In addition, a wide range of trojan viruses are able to shut off the embedded antivirus. It is much better to make use of the separated program that will not have such weakness.

I would certainly advise you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware² – a well-proven anti-malware device that will undoubtedly eliminate the malware from your personal computer and create an invulnerable shield with a Proactive protection feature. However, let’s manage Vpntag adware first.

Removing Vpntag 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 Vpntag 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 ensure that your browser will be connected the proper DNS while connecting to the site you want. Make a text file titled “hosts” on your desktop, then open it and fill it with the following lines³:

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 issue that makes the things a lot harder to restore, particularly without the anti-malware program. Most of adware variations that are used to show you the Vpntag pop-up advertisements are altering the deep browser settings, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to fix your browser settings after your machine was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly collapse soon. In some cases, you will see no crash, but huge lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 secs, and afterwards it will be back to the normal, until 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.

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 Vpntag Pop-ups?

Name: Vpntag

Description: Vpntag - 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 Vpntag.xyz push notifications?” or “why do Vpntag.xyz pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Vpntag 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 overview and the reasons why I recommend it for malware elimination.
3. Official Microsoft guide for hosts file reset.