Remove Cleantoclean.xyz Pop-up Virus — How to Remove?

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Cleantoclean.xyz pop-up notifications can appear unexpectedly, covering the subject of the site you explored or opening your web browser when you don’t wish it to be opened.

Clicking on the Cleantoclean.xyz promotion can cause the injection of different malware or unwanted programs. In this article, you will see the guide of Cleantoclean.xyz popups clearing in a couple of ways, as well as examining your computer for additional malware existence.

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What are Cleantoclean.xyz pop-ups?

Cleantoclean.xyz popups are a result of adware action. Adware is a type of malware that presents you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which creates a large volume of earnings for adware representatives. These ads may have explicit information, or have a web link to harmful content/website, considering that adware maintainers have no reason to examine the goodness of the content they are going to reveal – their solitary target is money.

Cleantoclean.xyz push notification

Cleantoclean.xyz push notification.

Pop-up marketing itself is a good, affordable and very effective advertising tool1. It permits the seller to attach the customers’ attention to their site, and the buyers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they intend to purchase. When the person will get a pop-up notification that the TV set he desires to purchase is offered at the online shop he/she checked out previously with a 15% price cut, one will undoubtedly use this possibility and buy it. Considering the very low cost for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising instrument is a much-loved thing amongst the advertising teams of huge online sellers.

However, such a successful system could not be missed by malware developers. Potential to show the popup ads by force to the targets of malware invasion is an ideal basis for evil-minded tricks with the popup ads. And Cleantoclean.xyz ads is one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a details for the Cleantoclean.xyz
SiteCleantoclean.xyz
HostingAS198068 P.A.G.M. OU
Estonia, Jõhvi
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address5.45.112.153
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorLpnothome, Snowlaysecond, Licktaughigme
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Cleantoclean.xyz virus?

There are a plenty of ways of becoming contaminated by the adware that result in the Cleantoclean.xyz popups tornado. A lion’s part of this malware cases is after the free software or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Free software may additionally be downloaded from the main site, and the adware is delivered as a legit bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A huge amount of individuals frequently make use of the dubious programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, different utilities that are free of cost, or perhaps hacked programs. All of these kinds of software are dangerous, because it is quite simple to build in a Cleantoclean.xyz malware under the guise of part of the license hacking script, or as a part of the self-made algoritm within the Windows optimization tool.

Cleantoclean.xyz popup virus may additionally be concealed in the ad somewhere on the unusual web page. Such sites are typically full of colorful and blinking advertisements, and their proprietors often approve any promotions to be published on their web page. Therefore, clicking on such banners is a risky thing: only the advertisement contractor realizes what will occur when you click this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you may additionally receive something much more damaging, 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 unwanted programs, like Cleantoclean.xyz pop-up virus can provoke a wide range of troubles on your PC. Distracting is not the only problem – pop-ups may show you the ads, where you are offered to download another unknown program, or “a amazing anti-malware tool”. Scareware is usually distributed under the last motto. Potentially unwanted programs, in turn, can have spyware functions. And it is pretty hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a legit one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and pseudo antiviruses, popup-related promotions are also exploited as a distribution way by different trojan viruses, for instance – coin miners. The consequences of actions of such malware is 100% unwanted, and can cost you several hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not clicking these advertisements, they can be clicked by someone who also uses your personal computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the things may become much more serious, and it will be much harder to deal with it without information loss. It is recommended to get rid of the viruses with anti-malware applications as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Cleantoclean.xyz pop-up advertisements?

The manual of Cleantoclean.xyz adware removal consists of 2 sections. Initially, we need to deal with the malware, and after that fix the consequences of its activity. The removal task is very easy, because it may be executed even with the use of Microsoft Defender – anti-virus program that is present on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nonetheless, as a result of its significant resources utilization, along with some errors that may be serious for some groups of individuals, Defender is oftentimes disabled by the users, so its utilization is most likely impossible. Additionally, various trojan viruses have the ability to switch off the embedded antivirus. It is far better to make use of the separated program that will not have such vulnerabilities.

I’d suggest you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven security tool that will surely exterminate the malware from your computer and also make an invulnerable shield with a Proactive protection function. But let’s manage Cleantoclean.xyz adware first.

Removing Cleantoclean.xyz 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 Cleantoclean.xyz 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, 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.

However, there is one issue that makes things a lot more difficult to restore, especially without the anti-malware software. A lot of adware versions that are utilized to show you the Cleantoclean.xyz pop-up ads are adjusting the deep browser configurations, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to change your browser settings after your computer was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly collapse soon. In certain cases, you will see no crash, but significant lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 secs, and afterwards it will be back to the typical, up until 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 Cleantoclean.xyz Pop-ups?

Name: Cleantoclean.xyz

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