Remove Am-t.c-rtb Pop-up Virus — How to Remove?

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Am-t.c-rtb pop-up alerts can show up out of the blue, covering the material of the page you visited or opening your web browser when you do not desire it to be opened.

Clicking on the Am-t.c-rtb promotion may cause the injection of various malware or unwanted programs. In this article, you will see the tutorial of Am-t.c-rtb popups clearing in multiple manners, and also inspecting your computer for additional malware presence.

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What are Am-t.c-rtb pop-ups?

Am-t.c-rtb popups are an effect of adware activity. Adware is a sort of malware that shows you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click ads, which generates a large amount of earnings for adware suppliers. These ads might include explicit composition, or have a link to harmful content/website, due to the fact that adware maintainers have no reason to examine the goodness of the content they are going to show – their solitary target is money.

Am-t.c-rtb push notification

Am-t.c-rtb push notification.

Pop-up promotions itself is a very good, cheap and also really efficient advertising tool1. It allows the vendor to link the customers’ attention to their site, and the buyers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they intend to buy. When the person will get a pop-up notification that the TV set he wishes to buy is offered at the online store he/she saw previously with a 15% price cut, one will definitely use this possibility and buy it. Considering the exceptionally low price for the popups and their targeting, such a promotion and marketing method is a favourite thing amongst the marketing teams of huge internet sellers.

However, such a successful plan could not be missed by malware creators. Option to demonstrate the popup advertisements forcibly to the people of malware invasion is an ideal basis for evil-minded tricks with the popup ads. And Am-t.c-rtb.com advertisements is one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a short info for the Am-t.c-rtb
SiteAm-t.c-rtb.com
HostingAS13335 Cloudflare, Inc.
United States, San Francisco
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address104.21.235.207
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorStunnig, Riverafter, Downloadzonearea
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Am-t.c-rtb virus?

There are a plenty of ways of getting contaminated by the adware that cause the Am-t.c-rtb popups storm. A lion’s part of this computer virus cases is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Freeware can likewise be downloaded from the official web page, and the adware is presented as a legal bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A number of individuals frequently make use of the dubious programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, various tools that are free of cost, or perhaps hacked programs. Every one of these kinds of software are risky, due to the fact that it is extremely simple to integrate a Am-t.c-rtb 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.

Am-t.c-rtb popup malware can additionally be concealed in the ad somewhere on the strange web page. Such websites are generally packed with bright and blinking ads, and their owners generally accept any promos to be posted on their page. Hence, clicking such banners is a risky thing: only the ad provider realizes what will occur when you click this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you may additionally receive something far more damaging, like ransomware or coin miner; the large share of coin miners distribution is exactly after the malicious ads.

People dislike popups

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

Potentially undesirable programs, like Am-t.c-rtb popup virus can cause a wide range of different problems on your personal computer. Distracting is not the only problem – pop-ups can display you the ads, where you are offered to download another strange application, or “a perfect anti-malware tool”. Scareware is usually distributed with the last motto. Potentially undesirable programs, in turn, may have spyware functions. And it is quite hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a good one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and pseudo antiviruses, popup-related promotions are also chosen as a distribution way by various trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such malware is 100% unpleasant, and can cost you several hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not tapping these advertisements, they may be clicked by someone who also uses your PC – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the situation may become much more serious, and it will be much harder to deal with it without data loss. It is recommended to eliminate the viruses with anti-malware applications as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Am-t.c-rtb pop-up advertisements?

The guide of Am-t.c-rtb adware elimination contains 2 sections. First, we need to eliminate the malware, and after that correct the consequences of its activity. The elimination process is pretty easy, since it may be performed even with the use of Microsoft Defender – anti-virus program that is present on all computers with Windows 8/10. However, because of its significant resources utilization, along with some bugs that can be crucial for some kinds of individuals, Defender is frequently disabled by the users, so its use is likely impossible. Additionally, various trojan viruses are capable to switch off the embedded antivirus. It is far better to use the separated program that will not have such vulnerabilities.

I would certainly advise you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven antivirus device that will undoubtedly wipe out the viruses from your personal computer and also make an invulnerable shield with a Proactive protection feature. However, let’s deal with Am-t.c-rtb adware first.

Removing Am-t.c-rtb 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 Am-t.c-rtb 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 web browsers are reset, you need to make sure that your web browser will connect the correct DNS while connecting to the website you need. Make a text file named “hosts” on your computer’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.

However, there is one issue that makes the things much more difficult to repair, specifically without the anti-malware software. A lot of adware versions that are used to show you the Am-t.c-rtb pop-up advertisements are modifying the deep browser setups, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to fix your browser settings after your machine was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will collapse soon. Sometimes, you will see no crash, but significant lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 seconds, and then it will be back to the normal, up until you attempt to open settings again.

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 Am-t.c-rtb Pop-ups?

Name: Am-t.c-rtb

Description: Am-t.c-rtb - 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 Am-t.c-rtb.com push notifications?” or “why do Am-t.c-rtb.com pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Am-t.c-rtb 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 advertisements 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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