Remove Advtbox Virus — How to Fix Guide

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Advtbox pop-up notifications can appear out of the blue, covering the subject of the site you checked or opening your browser when you don’t wish it to be opened.

Clicking the Advtbox ad can result in the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the tutorial of Advtbox popups clearing in various manners, as well as checking your personal computer for extra viruses existence.

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What are Advtbox pop-ups?

Advtbox popups are an outcome of adware action. Adware is a type of malware that presents you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which produces a large amount of income for adware representatives. These advertisements might have sometimes shocking content, or have a link to harmful content/website, since adware maintainers have no purpose to examine the goodness of the material they are going to reveal – their solitary target is cash.

Advtbox push notification

Advtbox push notification.

Pop-up advertising itself is an excellent, cheap and very effective marketing method1. It enables the vendor to link the customers’ interest to their website, as well as the customers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they want to buy. When the customer will get a pop-up notification that the TV set he likes to buy is available at the online store he/she saw previously with a 15% price cut, one will surely use this possibility and buy it. Taking into consideration the extremely low cost for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising method is a favourite thing among the advertising teams of big online retail stores.

However, such a successful plan could not be missed by virus developers. Option to demonstrate the popup advertisements forcibly to the targets of malware attack is an ideal basis for malevolent manipulations with the popup promotions. And Advtbox.com promotions is just one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a info for the Advtbox site
SiteAdvtbox.com
HostingAS13335 Cloudflare, Inc.
United States, San Francisco
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address104.21.58.87
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorPoliticosta, Saarmlife, News
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Advtbox virus?

There are a lot of methods of getting contaminated by the adware that lead to the Advtbox popups tornado. A lion’s part of this virus cases is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Freeware may additionally be downloaded from the official site, and the adware is provided as a legit bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A number of individuals often utilize the uncertain programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, a wide range of tools that are free, and even hacked programs. Every one of these types of applications are risky, due to the fact that it is quite easy to include a Advtbox 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.

Advtbox popup malware can likewise be hidden in the promotion somewhere on the odd web page. Such web pages are generally loaded with colorful and blinking advertisements, and their owners generally approve any type of promotions to be published on their page. For this reason, clicking on such banners is a risky thing: only the advertisement contractor knows what will occur when you press this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you may also get something much more dangerous, like ransomware or coin miner; the big share of coin miners circulation is exactly after the malicious ads.

People dislike popups

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

Potentially unwanted programs, like Advtbox popup virus may provoke a wide range of different problems on your computer. Distracting is not the single effect – pop-ups may show you the promotions, where you are offered to get another dubious program, or “a perfect anti-malware tool”. Scareware is often spread under the last motto. Potentially unwanted programs, in turn, can have spyware functions. And it is pretty hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a good one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and fake antiviruses, popup-related promotions are also chosen as a spreading way by various trojan viruses, for instance – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such malware is 100% unwanted, and can cost you hundreds or even thousands of dollars. And even if you are not interacting with these promotions, they can be clicked by whoever who also uses your PC – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the situation can become much more serious, and it will be much harder to deal with it without data and money loss. It is recommended to eliminate the viruses with anti-malware applications as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Advtbox pop-up advertisements?

The tutorial of Advtbox adware elimination contains 2 sections. Initially, we need to deal with the malware, and after that deal with the results of its activity. The removal task is quite easy, since it can be executed even with the use of Microsoft Defender – security software that is available on all computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, because of its significant resources usage, along with some defects that can be pivotal for some kinds of users, Defender is often turned off by the users, so its utilization is most likely impossible. In addition, various trojan viruses are capable to switch off the embedded antivirus. It is much better to use the separated program that will not have such vulnerabilities.

I would certainly advise you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven anti-malware device that will surely wipe out the viruses from your system and also create an invulnerable shield with a Proactive protection feature. But let’s deal with Advtbox adware initially.

Removing Advtbox 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.
  • Gridinsoft Anti-Malware during the scan process

  • 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.
  • GridinSoft Anti-Malware scan results

  • When the scan is over, you may choose the action for each detected virus. For all files of Advtbox malware the default option is “Delete”. Press “Apply” to finish the malware removal.
  • GridinSoft Anti-Malware - After Cleaning

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

To reset Edge, do the following steps :
  1. Open “Settings and more” tab in upper right corner, then find here “Settings” button. In the appeared menu, choose “Reset settings” option :
  2. Reseting the Edge browser

  3. After picking the Reset Settings option, you will see the following menu, stating about the settings which will be reverted to original :
For Mozilla Firefox, do the next actions :
  1. Open Menu tab (three strips in upper right corner) and click the “Help” button. In the appeared menu choose “troubleshooting information” :
  2. The first step to revert Mozilla Firefox

  3. In the next screen, find the “Refresh Firefox” option :
  4. The second step of Firefox restoration
    After choosing this option, you will see the next message :
    The last step for Firefox
If you use Google Chrome
  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 :
Opera can be reset in the next way
  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 browser will definitely be connected the accurate DNS while connecting to the web page you need. Create a text file titled “hosts” on your pc’s 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.

Nonetheless, there is one issue that makes the things a lot more difficult to repair, specifically without the anti-malware software. The majority of adware versions that are utilized to show you the Advtbox pop-up promotions are modifying the deep browser setups, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to fix your browser settings after your PC was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will collapse 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 then it will be back to the normal, 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.

Tools tab in GridinSoft Anti-Malware

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.

Reset Browser Settings tab in GridinSoft Anti-Malware

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.

How to Remove Advtbox Pop-ups?

Name: Advtbox

Description: Advtbox - a lot of users became a target for the pop-up advertisements. I have a lot of friends who literally bombed me with the questions like “how to remove Advtbox.com push notifications?” or “why do Advtbox.com pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Advtbox pop-ups, which may corrupt your browser’s correct performance, and create a lot of troubles while you are working.

Operating System: Windows

Application Category: Adware

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References

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

About the author

Wilbur Woodham

I was a technical writer from early in my career, and consider IT Security one of my foundational skills. I’m sharing my experience here, and I hope you find it useful.

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