Remove personal-video.live popup virus from Chrome/Firefox/IE/Safari

Users experiencing incessant browser redirects to personal-video.live web page accompanied by annoying popups need to remove the underlying virus without delay.

1. What is the personal-video.live virus?
2. Automated removal of personal-video.live popup virus
3. Personal-video.live redirect removal for Android
4. Restore web browser settings to their original defaults

What is the personal-video.live virus?

Giving a regular-looking website ostensibly innocuous permission is both a mundane thing and a potential risk nowadays. Numerous web services are motivated by benign intentions when displaying popups that ask for permission to show notifications. This way, their fans can get a shortcut in staying tuned for important updates published on these sites. Meanwhile, cybercriminals are heavily exploiting such privileges for sketchy purposes. In case an unsuspecting user allows these types of messages to be shown by the wrong web page, they are instantly dragged into an annoying advertising campaign with a bitter flavor of extra malware touting. One of the increasingly encountered sources of this nuisance is personal-video.live, a malicious Internet hub hosting a bevy of fraudulent landing pages. The trick is that people often have no clue that they are already on the hook even before they ever click that Allow button on popup irksome dialogs such as the ones shown in the image below.

The gist of the problem boils down to the fact that users are repeatedly redirected to numerous scam pages under the personal-video.live “branding”, and this happens in a forcible way. The underlying cause of these traffic twisting instances is a strain of adware previously deposited into the Windows PC or mobile gadget. By the way, Android devices are subject to this impact just like computers are. The unwelcome application installs an add-on in Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, or Safari so that the web surfing activities are badly tampered with further on. The extension may change the default homepage and search engine settings in the victim’s preferred browser, defiantly substituting them with a URL similar to personal-video.live/lp/edchargin/lp5. The domain name proper may be prepended with a few random characters and the “lp” part can have a different digit next to it. Furthermore, the whole address string is appended with additional characters that denote a sub-wave of the traffic redistribution frenzy.

The specific URL version defines what kind of a landing page the user will be forwarded to. In most cases, it’s a spoofed online video site that mimics a buffering process. To proceed with watching this content, the visitor is instructed to interact with a dialog saying “Personal-video.live wants to show notifications”. There are two buttons on it – Allow and Block. Even if the latter is the user’s choice, the hoax won’t discontinue and there will be more redirects leading to the same or other variants of the nasty site. Clicking the Allow button is, obviously, a launchpad for a more serious malware attack. Not only will the victim’s Internet experience become deluged with redundant ads, but there is also a high likelihood of more threats gaining a foothold on the targeted computer or mobile device.

The consequences of permitting personal-video.live page to display notifications via this scheme are way beyond garden-variety updates about new materials published on the fishy site in question. The upshot is mostly about advertisements that appear throughout nearly all websites, including legit ones the victim routinely goes to. These objects are manifold, ranging from in-text links and comparison shopping entities – to popup banners and interstitial adverts being spawned in large quantities outside the current browser window. As mentioned above, some of these ads promote more infections and the victim is literally one click away from downloading an info-stealing Trojan or ransomware. Yet another outcome of this hijack is that the affected web browser can be rerouted to a slew of other untrustworthy sites, including tech support scams and dubious online gambling resources. Given the entirety of adverse effects, personal-video.live virus should be removed once the early symptoms become apparent. The steps below shed light on the ways to get rid of this dangerous combo of a browser hijacker and adware.

Automated removal of personal-video.live popup virus

Owing to an up-to-date database of malware signatures and intelligent behavioral detection, the recommended software can quickly locate the infection, eradicate it and remediate all harmful changes. So go ahead and do the following:

1. Download and install the antimalware tool. Open the solution and have it check your PC for PUPs and other types of malicious software by clicking the Start Computer Scan button

Download personal-video.live virus remover

2. Rest assured the scan report will list all items that may harm your operating system. Select the detected entries and click Fix Threats to get the troubleshooting completed.

Use Control Panel to get rid of the personal-video.live virus

• Open up the Control Panel from your Start menu in Windows. Depending on the OS build, select Uninstall a program (Windows 10, 7 and Vista) or Add or Remove Programs (Windows 8)

• To facilitate the process of locating the threat, sort the programs list by date to get the latest ones displayed at the very top. Find an unfamiliar, suspicious entry under the Name column, click Uninstall and follow further directions to get the removal done

Personal-video.live redirect removal for Android

Here’s a walkthrough to sort out the personal-video.live malware issue on an Android device, which might also be a target in this malvertising campaign. Keep in mind, though, that uninstall attempts in regular mode may be futile due to the mechanics of this persistent infection. Therefore, you need to perform the procedure in safe mode. Go ahead and do the following:

• Press and hold the Power button. Then, tap and hold the Power off option on the screen. Doing so will boot your device into safe mode

• Android will ask you to confirm that you’d like to enter safe mode. Tap OK on the dialog

• You will now see the Safe mode inscription at the bottom left of your screen. Go to Settings and choose Apps

• Scroll down the list of applications, focusing on the ones that were installed recently. Find Personal-Video.live or a sketchy entry with a different name that could as well be the culprit

• Select the misbehaving app and tap Uninstall

• Confirm removal on the relevant dialog box and reboot your device. By default, Android will get you back into regular mode. You should now be good to go – the personal-video.live virus won’t be triggering any redirects or irritating popups anymore.

Restore web browser settings to their original defaults

In the circumstances of a complex browser hijack like this, executing a reset makes the most sense despite a few obvious downsides. Customizations such as saved passwords, bookmarked pages etc. will be gone, but so will all the changes made by the potentially unwanted program. The instructions below address the workflow for the web browsers most targeted by the personal-video.live redirect virus.

Reset Google Chrome

• Open Chrome, expand the Customize and control Google Chrome menu and choose Settings

• Scroll down the settings screen and click Advanced down at the bottom

• Move on to the Reset and clean up sub-section and select the option that says Restore settings to their original defaults

• Finally, confirm the restoration by clicking Reset settings on the warning message

• Restart Chrome.

Reset Mozilla Firefox

• Open Firefox, type about:support in the URL area and press Enter. Alternatively, you can click on the Open menu icon in the top right-hand part of the browser window, then select the Help option and proceed to Troubleshooting Information

• On the Troubleshooting Information screen, spot the Refresh Firefox button and click on it

• Follow subsequent directions to reset Firefox to its original settings

• Restart the browser.

Reset Internet Explorer

• Select Internet options under IE’s Tools (Alt+X)

• Proceed by clicking on Advanced tab, then select Reset

• To confirm the intended changes, click Reset on the Reset Internet Explorer Settings screen after ascertaining that the Delete personal settings checkbox is enabled

• Reboot the machine to fully implement the fix.

Reset Safari

• Go to the Safari menu and select Preferences

• When on the Preferences screen, select the Privacy tab and hit the Remove All Website Data button if you are up to erasing all website data stored on your Mac. Otherwise, you can use a site-specific removal option described below

• A dialog will appear, asking you to validate your choice. Click the Remove Now button if you are sure. Be advised this will log you out of online services and undo personalized web browser settings such as saved passwords, etc.

• Safari also allows deleting data for specific sites rather than all sites in general. To use this option, click the Details button under Privacy tab

• Select the websites for which you would like to erase data and click the Remove button

• Click the Done button to confirm and exit. You can also select the Remove All option to remove all data stored by the listed websites.

Revise your security status

Post-factum assessment of the accuracy component in malware removal scenarios is a great habit that prevents the comeback of harmful code or replication of its unattended fractions. Make sure you are good to go by running an additional safety checkup.

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