Clicking the Download-portal.net promotion can lead to the injection of different malware or unwanted programs. In this guide, you will see the manual of Download-portal.net popups removal in multiple manners, and also inspecting your computer for additional viruses existence.

What are Download-portal.net pop-ups?

Download-portal.net popups are an outcome of adware activity. Adware is a sort of malware that presents you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which produces a substantial volume of earnings for adware suppliers. These promotions may include sometimes shocking composition, or have a web link to harmful content/website, since adware maintainers have no reason to inspect the goodness of the web content they are going to show – their single target is cash.

Download-portal.net push notification.

Pop-up advertising itself is a good, affordable and also really successful advertising method¹. It enables the vendor to link the customers’ attention to their website, and the customers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they intend to purchase. When the consumer will get a pop-up alert that the TV set he desires to purchase is available at the online shop he/she checked out earlier with a 15% discount, one will certainly use this chance and buy it. Considering the incredibly low price for the popups and their targeting, such a marketing instrument is a much-loved thing among the advertising teams of big online retail stores.

However, such a successful scheme could not be missed by malware creators. Option to show the popup advertisements forcibly to the victims of malware attack is a perfect basis for malevolent manipulations with the popup promotions. And Download-portal.net promotions is among hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Site	Download-portal.net
Hosting	AS13335 Cloudflare, Inc. United States, San Francisco
Infection Type	Adware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address	172.67.160.222
Symptoms	Annoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behavior	Scanuralerts, Bulbsecure, Redirectpathtopath
Fix Tool	GridinSoft Anti-MalwareTo remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Download-portal.net virus?

There are a number of methods of becoming contaminated by the adware that result in the Download-portal.net popups storm. A lion’s part of this virus cases is after the free software or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Freeware may also be downloaded from the main website, and the adware is provided as a legitimate bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A plenty of individuals regularly work with the dubious programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, various tools that are free, and even hacked programs. Every one of these types of applications are unsafe, because it is quite simple to include a Download-portal.net 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.

Download-portal.net popup malware may additionally be concealed in the promotion somewhere on the strange web page. Such sites are usually packed with colorful and blinking advertisements, and their proprietors typically approve any type of promotions to be placed on their page. Hence, clicking such banners is a shot in the dark: only the advertisement provider knows what will occur when you press this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you may also get something a lot more damaging, 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 unwanted applications, like Download-portal.net popup virus can provoke a variety of problems on your personal computer. Distracting is not the only effect – pop-ups can show you the promotions, where you are offered to download one more dubious application, or “a perfect security tool”. Scareware is usually distributed under the last slogun. Potentially undesirable programs, in turn, can have spyware functions. And it is quite hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a legit one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and pseudo antiviruses, popup-related banners are also chosen as a spreading way by various 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 clicking these banners, 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 solve it without data and money loss. It is recommended to eliminate the viruses with antivirus applications as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Download-portal.net pop-up advertisements?

The manual of Download-portal.net adware elimination consists of 2 parts. Initially, we need to eliminate the malware, and then take care of the effects of its activity. The removal process is pretty easy, since it can be executed even with using Microsoft Defender – anti-virus program that is available on all computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, as a result of its large resources consumption, along with some errors that can be pivotal for some groups of users, Defender is often turned off by the users, so its use is probably impossible. Moreover, a wide range of trojan viruses can turn off the embedded antivirus. It is better to use the separated program that will not have such vulnerabilities.

I would certainly recommend you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware² – a well-proven anti-malware tool that will undoubtedly wipe out the malware from your computer and also make an impenetrable shield with a Proactive protection function. However, let’s manage Download-portal.net adware first.

Download GridinSoft Anti-Malware

Removing Download-portal.net 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 Download-portal.net 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

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 :

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 :

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 :

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 appropriate DNS while connecting to the web page you need. Create a text file named “hosts” on your 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.

Nevertheless, there is one problem that makes the things a lot more difficult to restore, specifically without the anti-malware program. Most of adware versions that are utilized to show you the Download-portal.net pop-up promotions are modifying the deep browser configurations, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to fix your browser settings after your computer was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will collapse soon. In certain cases, you will see no crash, however, significant lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 secs, and afterwards it will be back to the typical, till you try to open settings one more time.

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.

References

1. More about pop-up ads on Wikipedia.
2. GridinSoft Anti-Malware overview and also the reasons why I suggest it for malware elimination.
3. Official Microsoft guide for hosts file reset.