Remove Antom Virus — How to Fix Guide

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Antom pop-up notifications may appear unexpectedly, covering the subject of the site you checked or opening your browser when you do not need it to be opened.

Clicking the Antom promotion can trigger the injection of different malware or unwanted programs. In this guide, you will see the manual of Antom popups removal in various methods, as well as inspecting your computer for other malware existence.

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What are Antom pop-ups?

Antom popups are a consequence of adware action. Adware is a kind of malware that presents you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which generates a substantial amount of revenue for adware representatives. These ads might contain explicit content, or have a web link to malicious content/website, since adware maintainers have no reason to examine the goodness of the content they are going to reveal – their single target is money.

Antom push notification

Antom push notification.

Pop-up promotions itself is a very good, cheap and really productive advertising tool1. It permits the seller to link the buyers’ attention to their site, as well as the customers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they want to buy. When the consumer will receive a pop-up notification that the TV set he wishes to purchase is offered at the online store he/she saw previously with a 15% discount, one will surely use this chance and purchase it. Taking into consideration the extremely small cost for the popups and their targeting, such a promotion and marketing tool is a favourite thing among the advertising teams of huge online stores.

However, such a profitable scheme could not be missed by malware creators. Ability to show the popup ads by force to the victims of malware invasion is an ideal basis for evil-minded adjustments with the popup promotions. And Antom.xyz advertisements is just one of hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a details for the Antom site
SiteAntom.xyz
HostingAS202053 UpCloud Ltd
Singapore, Singapore
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address94.237.73.48
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorMreaynew, Propcscan, Humourchapter
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Antom virus?

There are a number of ways of getting contaminated by the adware that trigger the Antom 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 may 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 huge amount of people often use the dubious programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, various tools that are free, or perhaps hacked programs. All of these kinds of programs are dangerous, due to the fact that it is very simple to build in a Antom malware under the cover of part of the license hacking script, or as a component of the self-made algoritm within the Windows optimization tool.

Antom popup malware can likewise be hidden in the ad somewhere on the unusual website. Such websites are typically full of colorful and blinking ads, and their proprietors generally approve any kind of promos to be posted on their page. Therefore, clicking on such banners is a shot in the dark: only the ad contractor realizes what will happen when you press this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you may also get something a lot more unsafe, 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 undesirable applications, like Antom popup virus can initiate a wide range of troubles on your computer. Distracting is not the single effect – pop-ups may present you the ads, where you are offered to get one more unknown application, or “a effective anti-malware tool”. Scareware is often spread with the last motto. Potentially undesirable applications, 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 PUPs and fake antiviruses, popup-related banners are also exploited as a distribution method by various trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of actions of such viruses is 100% unpleasant, 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 someone who also uses your PC – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the situation can become much more serious, and it will be much harder to solve it without information loss. It is recommended to eliminate the viruses with anti-malware programs as soon as possible.

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

The tutorial of Antom adware clearing includes 2 sections. Initially, we need to deal with the malware, and after that repair the results of its action. The removal process is quite simple, since it can be executed even with using Microsoft Defender – anti-virus tool that is present on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nonetheless, because of its substantial resources usage, as well as some bugs that can be pivotal for some groups of users, Defender is oftentimes disabled by the users, so its utilization is probably impossible. Additionally, different trojan viruses are able to switch off the embedded antivirus. It is far better to use the separated program that will not have such weakness.

I would certainly advise you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven security device that will undoubtedly remove the malware from your PC and create an impenetrable cover with a Proactive protection feature. But let’s deal with Antom adware initially.

Removing Antom 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 Antom 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 web browser will definitely connect the accurate DNS while connecting to the website you want. Make a text file titled “hosts” on your desktop, after that open it and fill it with the following text3:

# 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.

Nevertheless, there is one issue that makes things much harder to fix, particularly without the anti-malware program. Most of adware variants that are used to show you the Antom pop-up promotions are changing the deep browser setups, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to fix your browser settings after your system was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly crash soon. In certain cases, you will see no crash, but large lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 secs, and then it will be back to the normal, till you try to open settings once more.

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 Antom Pop-ups?

Name: Antom

Description: Antom - 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 Antom.xyz push notifications?” or “why do Antom.xyz pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Antom 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 overview and the reasons why I advise 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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