Protectad iPhone

Protectad

Protectad is a browser hijacker that can infect almost every iOS compliant browser and turn it into an ad-generating platform. Browser hijackers like Protectad exist to shower the screen of your iPhone or iPad with a number of paid ads, banners, and pop-ups, as well as to serve as a page-redirecting tool to sponsored sites.

For as long as you have this app on your system, you will see numerous online ads and promotional materials in your Safari, or whichever is the default web browser on your iOS device.

As soon as Protectad gets installed on the system, you will notice changes to your browser’s default settings. For example, the Homepage URL will be replaced with a different one without your permission. A new search engine may take the place of your default search engine and start generating sponsored search results.

In addition, during your browsing sessions, you will constantly be showered by a continuous stream of aggressive online promotions and redirect prompts. Clicking on any of these promotional materials will typically open more of them or reroute you to pages with questionable content where viruses, Ransomware, Trojans, and other malware may be lurking.

Unfortunately, you may not be able to close or remove the nagging advertisements and redirect links from your screen the usual way. In order to do that, and reset your browser’s settings back, you will need to use a set of instructions, such as the ones that you will find in the guide below. They will help you to completely remove Protectad from your iPhone or iPad to get rid of the ads invasion once and for all.

Remove Protectad from iPhone

If you have an iPhone virus, continue with the guide below.

If you have an Android virus, please use our Android Malware Removal guide.

If you have a Mac virus, please use our How to remove Ads on Mac guide.

If you have a Windows virus, please use our Windows Virus Removal guide.

This is the first thing you should try if you are getting targeted by this kind of spam. 

1. Log in yo your account at iCloud.com and tap on Calendar.
2. Tap on the Settings icon (a gear icon) located in the lower-left corner of the screen.
3. Now, select Preferences and then Advanced.
4. Change the Invitations setting from In-app notifications to Email to and provide your current email.
   
   
5. Lastly, click on Save to confirm the change.

Note that after you do that, you will no longer get any events automatically added to your Calendar. Instead, they’d go to the email you have provided. This also applies to the spam you’ve been getting – it would too go to your email, but at least you won’t be getting the spam notifications on your screen.

The next part of this post will tell you how to check your iPhone for an actual Calendar spam virus and how to deal with such a virus if it gets detected.

Here is one quick way to remove Calendar Virus from your iPhone:

• First, on your iPhone/iPad, navigate to “Settings”.
• Second, tap on “Passwords and Accounts”.
• Then, navigate to Subscribed Calendars.
• Once you get there, specifically look for anything that seems questionable, unfamiliar or suspicious.
• If you detect anything, delete it.

If this doesn’t work, please proceed to the steps in the removal guide below.

First you need to close all pop-ups that are currently open.

• If the pop-up has a checkbox named “Don’t show more alerts from this webpage” click on the checkbox before closing the Ad.
• If a Block Alerts button happens to appear after you shut down a pop-up on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch tab that button to stop receiving alerts from the same page.

In case that a pop-up fails to close after performing the above operations:

• On your Mac you should make your Safari browser close forcibly by pressing Command-Option-Esc. Select Safari from the list of Apps and force close it. After you force close it you need to restart Safari, but please hold the shift button while it starts. This will prevent any pesky Ads from opening automatically.
• On your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch you can do the same by pressing the home button twice in a quick succession. You’ll then see a preview of all apps that have been recently used. Swipe left to find Safari and then swipe up on the app’s preview to close it forcibly In order to prevent Safari from opening unwanted windows on startup go to Settings->Safari and Clear History, as well as Website Data. This will also clear your browser history and cookies so keep that in mind and export them if you want to keep them.

Choose Preferences from the Safari menu. Then do the following:

1. Select the Security icon and then click on “Block pop-up windows“. This should stop many types of pop-ups from appearing.

2. Next check on your homepage and the settings for the search engines. Adware likes messing with those. We can not provide more specific instructions for this, as you may be using many different browsers.
   • Select the General icon and look at the Homepage field. It should either be empty or filled with the address of the Homepage you want.
   • Follow up on the Search icon. Again it should be either the default search engine or any that you have set for yourself. Note that in some versions of Safari these settings are found in the General panel/

Open Safari and click on the Extensions button. Note that Adware use extensions almost exclusively to inject the pop-up Ads into your browser. Any extension on this list that you do not remember installing yourself is likely planted there by the Adware. Remove ALL extensions you are unfamiliar with.