Remove Publicconfirm.com Virus — How to Fix Guide

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

Clicking the Publicconfirm.com advertisement may cause the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this article, you will see the tutorial of Publicconfirm.com popups removal in a couple of manners, as well as checking your PC for other viruses existence.

GridinSoft Anti-Malware Review
It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!
Removing Publicconfirm.com manually may take hours and may damage your PC in the process. I recommend you to download GridinSoft Anti-Malware for threats removal. Allows to complete scan and cure your PC during the trial period.
Gridinsoft Anti-Malware 6-day trial available.
EULA | Privacy Policy | 10% Off Coupon
Subscribe to our Telegram channel to be the first to know about news and our exclusive materials on information security.

What are Publicconfirm.com pop-ups?

Publicconfirm.com popups are an outcome of adware presence. Adware is a kind of malware that demonstrates to you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click promotions, which creates a large volume of earnings for adware suppliers. These promotions may include explicit material, or have a link to malevolent content/website, considering that adware maintainers have no reason to check the goodness of the web content they are going to reveal – their solitary target is cash.

Publicconfirm.com push notification

Publicconfirm.com push notification.

Pop-up marketing itself is a very good, cheap and extremely effective marketing solution1. It permits the vendor to link the customers’ attention to their website, as well as the customers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they want to purchase. When the person will receive a pop-up alert that the TV set he likes to purchase is offered at the online store he/she checked out previously with a 15% discount, one will surely use this chance and buy it. Considering the exceptionally small cost for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising and marketing instrument is a favourite thing amidst the advertising departments of big online retail stores.

However, such a rewarding plan could not be missed by virus developers. Option to demonstrate the popup advertisements by force to the targets of malware attack is an ideal basis for malevolent adjustments with the popup promotions. And Publicconfirm.com ads is just one of hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a short summary for the Publicconfirm.com
SitePublicconfirm.com
HostingAS50245 Serverel Inc.
Netherlands, Amsterdam
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address109.206.187.4
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorFappening, Arthahoonte, Timoncaviya
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Publicconfirm.com virus?

There are a lot of ways of becoming infected by the adware that create the Publicconfirm.com popups storm. A lion’s part of this computer virus instances is after the free software or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Freeware may also be downloaded from the main site, and the adware is offered as a legit bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A huge amount of users oftentimes work with the unreliable programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, different apps that are free, or even hacked programs. Every one of these sorts of programs are unsafe, because it is very simple to integrate a Publicconfirm.com malware under the cover of part of the license hacking script, or as a component of the self-made algoritm inside of the Windows optimization tool.

Publicconfirm.com popup virus may additionally be concealed in the advertisement somewhere on the odd web page. Such websites are typically packed with colorful and blinking advertisements, and their owners usually accept any kind of promotions to be placed on their web page. Thus, clicking on such banners is a shot in the dark: only the ad contractor realizes what will happen when you click this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you can also get something far more dangerous, like ransomware or coin miner; the large share of coin miners circulation is exactly after the malicious advertisements.

People dislike popups

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

Potentially undesirable applications, like Publicconfirm.com pop-up virus can cause a variety of problems on your PC. Distracting is not the only effect – pop-ups may display you the banners, where you are offered to download one more unknown program, or “a effective anti-malware tool”. Scareware is usually spread under the last motto. Potentially unwanted programs, in turn, may have spyware functionality. And it is very hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a legit one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and fake antiviruses, popup-related banners are also chosen as a distribution method by different trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of actions of such malware is 100% unpleasant, and can cost you several hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not tapping these banners, they can be clicked by someone who also makes use of your computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the things may become much more serious, and it will be much harder to solve it without data loss. It is recommended to remove the viruses with anti-malware programs as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Publicconfirm.com pop-up advertisements?

The manual of Publicconfirm.com adware clearing consists of 2 parts. Initially, we need to get rid of the malware, and afterwards deal with the consequences of its action. The removal process is very simple, since it can be performed even with the use of Microsoft Defender – anti-malware program that is present on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nonetheless, due to its large resources consumption, along with some bugs that may be serious for some kinds of users, Defender is frequently disabled by the users, so its usage is probably impossible. Additionally, different trojan viruses can disable the embedded antivirus. It is better to make use of the separated program that will not have such exposures.

I’d suggest you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven anti-malware tool that will definitely remove the malware from your PC and also create an impenetrable shield with a Proactive protection function. But let’s take care of Publicconfirm.com adware first.

Removing Publicconfirm.com 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 Publicconfirm.com 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 ensure that your web browser will connect the appropriate DNS while connecting to the website you need. Create a text file titled “hosts” on your computer’s desktop, then 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.

Nonetheless, there is one trouble that makes the things much harder to restore, specifically without the anti-malware program. A lot of adware versions that are used to show you the Publicconfirm.com pop-up advertisements are altering the deep browser settings, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to fix your browser settings after your PC was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly collapse quickly. In certain cases, you will see no crash, but significant lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 seconds, and then it will be back to the normal, until 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 Publicconfirm.com Pop-ups?

Name: Publicconfirm.com

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

Sending
User Review
3.25 (4 votes)
Comments Rating 0 (0 reviews)

References

  1. More about pop-up ads on Wikipedia.
  2. GridinSoft Anti-Malware review and also 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.

Leave a Reply

Sending