How to remove Atowithdra pop-ups? — Fix Guide

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Atowithdra pop-up notifications can show up out of the blue, covering the content of the page you explored or opening your browser when you do not wish it to be opened.

Clicking the Atowithdra ad can cause the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the tutorial of Atowithdra popups clearing in multiple manners, and also checking your personal computer for other viruses presence.

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What are Atowithdra pop-ups?

Atowithdra popups are an outcome of adware action. Adware is a type of malware that shows you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click promotions, which creates a massive amount of income for adware representatives. These ads may contain sometimes shocking material, or have a web link to malicious content/website, due to the fact that adware maintainers have no purpose to inspect the goodness of the content they are going to reveal – their single target is money.

Atowithdra push notification

Atowithdra push notification.

Pop-up promotions itself is a very good, cheap and very efficient marketing solution1. It allows the vendor to link the customers’ attention to their website, as well as the customers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they intend to buy. When the customer will get a pop-up notification that the TV set he desires to buy is offered at the online store he/she visited earlier with a 15% price cut, one will definitely use this possibility and get it. Taking into consideration the exceptionally small cost for the popups and their targeting, such a marketing tool is a favorite thing amongst the marketing teams of huge internet retail stores.

However, such a profitable system could not be missed by malware developers. Option to show the popup advertisements forcibly to the targets of malware invasion is a great basis for evil-minded adjustments with the popup ads. And Atowithdra.space advertisements is one of hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a short details for the Atowithdra
SiteAtowithdra.space
HostingAS14618 Amazon.com, Inc.
United States, Ashburn
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address54.235.172.58
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorDaily, Multipleprofit, Ythub
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Atowithdra virus?

There are a plenty of methods of becoming infected by the adware that trigger the Atowithdra popups tornado. A lion’s part of this computer virus incidents is after the free software or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Freeware can additionally be downloaded from the official site, and the adware is delivered as a legitimate bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A huge amount of individuals often utilize the unreliable programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, a wide range of utilities that are free, or even hacked programs. All of these kinds of programs are dangerous, due to the fact that it is extremely easy to build in a Atowithdra 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.

Atowithdra popup malware may also be hidden in the ad somewhere on the unusual web page. Such sites are typically loaded with bright and blinking advertisements, and their owners typically accept any promos to be placed on their web page. Thus, clicking such banners is a shot in the dark: only the advertisement provider realizes what will happen when you click this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you can additionally receive something a lot more dangerous, like ransomware or coin miner; the substantial 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 applications, like Atowithdra popup virus can initiate a variety of different troubles on your PC. Distracting is not the single problem – pop-up notifications can show you the promotions, where you are offered to get another dubious program, or “a amazing security tool”. Scareware is usually distributed under the last motto. Potentially unwanted programs, in turn, can have spyware functionality. And it is quite hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a normal one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and fake antiviruses, popup-related ads are also exploited as a spreading way by various trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such viruses is 100% unwanted, and can cost you several hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not clicking these banners, they can be clicked by whoever who also makes use of your personal computer – 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 antivirus programs as soon as possible.

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

The manual of Atowithdra adware clearing includes 2 parts. First, we need to remove the malware, and afterwards correct the effects of its activity. The elimination process is quite simple, due to the fact that it can be done even with the use of Microsoft Defender – security tool that is available on all computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, because of its significant resources consumption, as well as some defects that may be serious for some categories of individuals, Defender is frequently disabled by the users, so its usage is most likely impossible. Furthermore, a wide range of trojan viruses are able to turn off the embedded antivirus. It is much better to make use of the separated program that will not have such exposures.

I would certainly suggest you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven security device that will surely exterminate the malware from your PC and create an impenetrable shield with a Proactive protection function. But let’s deal with Atowithdra adware initially.

Removing Atowithdra 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 Atowithdra 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 definitely be connected the proper DNS while connecting to the site you need. Make 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.

However, there is one problem that makes things a lot harder to repair, particularly without the anti-malware program. Most of adware versions that are utilized to show you the Atowithdra pop-up promotions are adjusting the deep browser configurations, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to change your browser settings after your machine was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly collapse soon. Sometimes, you will see no crash, however, large lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 seconds, and then it will be back to the typical, until you attempt 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 Atowithdra Pop-ups?

Name: Atowithdra

Description: Atowithdra - 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 Atowithdra.space push notifications?” or “why do Atowithdra.space pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Atowithdra 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 recommend it for malware removal.
  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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