Undesirable Protect-connection.com pop-up notices may show up unexpectedly, covering the material of the page you visited or opening your browser when you do not want it to be opened. Clicking on the Protect-connection.com pop-up promotion may lead to the injection of various malware or unwanted programs. In this article, you will see the guide of Protect-connection.com popups clearing in several manners, and also inspecting your personal computer for extra viruses existence.

What are Protect-connection.com pop-ups?

Protect-connection.com popups are a result of adware action. Adware is a sort of malware that shows you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click ads, which creates a large volume of earnings for adware representatives. These promotions may consist of explicit information, or have a link to malevolent content/website, due to the fact that adware maintainers have no reason to check the goodness of the material they are going to show – their single target is cash.

Protect-connection.com push notification.

Pop-up advertising itself is a very good, affordable and really effective marketing solution¹ It enables the vendor to link the buyers’ interest to their website, and the buyers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they want to purchase. When the person will receive a pop-up alert that the TV set he desires to buy is offered at the online store he/she visited earlier with a 15% discount, one will surely use this opportunity and get it. Taking into consideration the exceptionally small cost for the popups and their targeting, such a marketing method is a favourite thing amongst the marketing teams of large internet retailers.

However, such a profitable plan could not be missed by malware creators. Potential to demonstrate the popup ads forcibly to the people of malware invasion is an ideal basis for malevolent manipulations with the popup ads. And Protect-connection.com promotions is just one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Site	Protect-connection.com
Hosting	AS14061 DigitalOcean, LLC United States, Santa Clara
Infection Type	Adware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address	142.93.25.104
Symptoms	Annoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behavior	Maandhave.biz, Hajzoa.site, Showplaytime.18
Fix Tool	GridinSoft Anti-MalwareTo remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Protect-connection.com virus?

There are a huge amount of methods of getting infected by the adware that trigger the Protect-connection.com popups tornado. A lion’s part of this virus instances is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Freeware may likewise be downloaded from the official site, and the adware is presented as a legitimate bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A plenty of users often use the unreliable programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, a wide range of tools that are free of cost, or perhaps hacked programs. All of these sorts of software are dangerous, because it is very easy to include a Protect-connection.com 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.

Protect-connection.com popup virus can also be hidden in the promotion somewhere on the unusual web page. Such websites are usually loaded with intense and blinking ads, and their owners usually permit any promotions to be placed on their page. Therefore, clicking such banners is a risky thing: only the advertisement provider knows what will happen when you press this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you may also receive something far more risky, like ransomware or coin miner; the big share of coin miners distribution is exactly after the malicious advertisements.

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

How can I get rid of Protect-connection.com pop-up advertisements?

The tutorial of Protect-connection.com adware elimination consists of 2 parts. First, we need to remove the malware, and after that deal with the effects of its activity. The removal task is pretty simple, since it can be executed even with the use of Microsoft Defender – anti-malware software that is present on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, because of its substantial resources usage, as well as some failures that can be serious for some groups of users, Defender is often turned off by the users, so its utilization is probably impossible. What’s more, various trojan viruses have the ability to turn off the embedded antivirus. It is much better to make use of the separated program that will not have such exposures.

I would certainly advise you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware² – a well-proven security tool that will undoubtedly exterminate the malware from your PC and also create an impenetrable cover with a Proactive protection function. But let’s handle Protect-connection.com adware initially.

Download GridinSoft Anti-Malware

Removing Protect-connection.com 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 Protect-connection.com 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 browsers are reset, you need to make sure that your web browser will definitely be connected the right DNS while connecting to the web page you want. Make a text file named “hosts” on your computer’s desktop, after that open it and fill it with the following text³:

# 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 things much more difficult to fix, specifically without the anti-malware program. Most of adware variants that are utilized to show you the Protect-connection.com pop-up advertisements are altering the deep browser settings, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to change your browser settings after your system was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will crash soon. In some cases, you will see no crash, but huge lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 seconds, and after that 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 advertisements on Wikipedia.
2. GridinSoft Anti-Malware overview and the reasons why I recommend it for malware removal.
3. Official Microsoft guide for hosts file reset.