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Remove Fake Adobe Flash Player Update Virus

Edmend Stewart

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Welcome to our Fake Adobe Flash Player Update Virus removal guide. The following instructions will aid you in removing the unwanted software from your PC.

Fake Adobe Flash Player Update is a questionable application which tends to fill the screen of the users with various sponsored links, pay-per-click ads, pop-ups and banners and which pretends to offer the users the latest offers, best deals and an overall better browsing experience. The strange application generates ads directly on the screen of the default browser and seems to be perfectly compatible with all popular browsing programs, including Chrome, Firefox, Explorer and others. However, according to security researchers, including the guys on our team, Fake Adobe Flash Player Update  is a potentially unwanted application, associated with the browser hijacker software category. This application usually invades the users’ machines bundled with freeware apps and gets installed by default via the Automatic or the Quick installation options of the wizard. Once inside the system, it typically alters the browser’s default settings and places its own dubious search engine tools, toolbars and homepage domains or new tab domains without asking for approval from the users. After that, the application starts to display customized ads, pop-ups, banners and sponsored links, which often page-redirect the users to pay-per-click sites. If the user tries to revert those settings, Fake Adobe Flash Player Update would typically simply continue to alter the browser options with the next browser launch, resulting in unwanted browser redirects and exposure to misleading ads, which can significantly decrease your online browsing experience.

To your relief, the representatives of the browser hijacker category are not related to any serious cyber crimes or system corruption. Therefore, most security experts consider them to be far less harmful than the typical computer viruses and do not deem them high-danger threats like Trojans or Ransomware. Still, keeping such page-redirecting and ad-generating software on the system might increase the chances of getting exposed to other sorts of nasty cyber threats, especially if you are not careful with what you click on. That’s why we advise you to carefully study the instructions in the removal guide below and perform the steps in order to safely uninstall Fake Adobe Flash Player Update and remove all of its changes.

Why is it a good idea to uninstall Fake Adobe Flash Player Update and permanently remove its ads?

An application like Fake Adobe Flash Player Update may track the users’ browsing habits and may also gather various browsing-related data, which could later be sold to third-parties for profits. It may also use a significant amount of systems resources to run various processes in the background, which may result in lowering the overall PC performance. Browser sluggishness, unresponsiveness and screen freezing could often be noticed while the hijacker operates on the system. All in all, this potentially unwanted application may not be as malicious as a Ransomware cryptovirus or a Trojan horse program, but it may stil trick the web users into clicking on various ads, offers, and websites, which may offer products or services with dubious quality, as well as sketchy content. What is more, such software may easily make people believe that the extension is useful and very easy to use, while it may actually bring no real value to them. The main objective of nearly all browser hijackers is to generate profits for their creators by displaying annoying adverts on the homepage or on other visited sites.

Remove Fake Adobe Flash Player Update Virus

I – Safe mode and revealing hidden files

  1. Boot your PC into Safe Mode /link/
  2. Reveal hidden files and folders /link/

II – Uninstallation

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  1. Use the Winkey+R keyboard combination, write Control Panel in the search field and hit enter.
  2. Go to Uninstall a program under Programs.
  3. Seek the unwanted software, select it and then click on Uninstall

If you are unable to spot Fake Adobe Flash Player Update, search for any unrecognized programs that you do not remember installing on your PC – the unwanted software might disguise itself by going under a different name.

III – Cleaning all your browsers

  1. Go to your browser’s icon, right-click on it and select Properties.
  2. Go to the Shortcut tab and in the Target make sure to delete anything written after “.exe”.
  3. Now, open your browser and follow the instructions below depending on whether you are using Chrome, Mozilla or IE.
  1. Go to your browser’s main menu located in the top-right corner of the screen and select Settings.
  2. Scroll down, click on Show Advanced Settings and then select Clear browsing data. Just to be sure, tick everything and clear the data.
  3. Now, in the left pane, go to Extensions and look through all extensions that are integrated within your browser. If you notice any suspicious add-on, disable it and then remove it.
  1. Similarly to Chrome, go to the main menu and select Add-ons and then Extensions.
  2. Remove any suspicious browser extensions that you may have even if they do not have the name Fake Adobe Flash Player Update on them.
  1. Go to Tools and select Manage add-ons.
  2. Click on all add-on types from the left pane and check if there is anything suspicious in the right panel. In case you find anything shade, make sure to remove it.

IV – Removing Shady processes

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  1. Go to your start menu, type Task Manager in the search field and from the results open View running processes with Task Manager.
  2. Thoroughly look through all processes. The name Fake Adobe Flash Player Update might not be there, but if you notice any shady looking process that consumes high amounts of memory it might be ran by the unwanted program.
  3. If you spot the process ran by Fake Adobe Flash Player Update, right-click on it, open its file location and delete everything in there. Then go back to the Task Manager and end the process.

V – DNS check

  1. In the start menu search box write View Network Connections and open the first result.
  2. Right-click on the network connection you are using and go to Properties.
  3. Select Internet Protocol Version (TCP/IPv4) and click on Properties.
  4. If Obtain DNS server addresses automatically is not checked, check it.
  5. Go to Advanced and select the DNS If there is anything in the DNS server addresses field, remove it and click OK.
  6. Click OK on the rest of the opened windows.
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