Puiont pop-up notifications can appear unexpectedly, covering the subject of the site you went to or opening your web browser when you don’t want it to be opened.
Clicking on the Puiont ad can lead to the injection of various malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the tutorial of Puiont popups clearing in various ways, as well as examining your computer for extra viruses existence.
What are Puiont pop-ups?
Puiont 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 massive volume of revenue for adware suppliers. These advertisements might have sometimes shocking composition, or have a web link to malevolent content/website, since adware maintainers have no purpose to inspect the goodness of the web content they are going to show – their single target is money.
Pop-up advertising itself is a very good, low-cost and also really successful marketing tool1. It makes it possible for the vendor to attach the customers’ attention to their site, as well as the customers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they intend to buy. When the consumer will receive a pop-up alert that the TV set he likes to buy is available at the online shop he/she visited previously with a 15% price cut, one will surely use this possibility and buy it. Taking into consideration the incredibly low price for the popups and their targeting, such a marketing instrument is a favourite thing amongst the marketing teams of big online stores.
Nevertheless, such a rewarding scheme could not be missed by virus creators. Potential to demonstrate the popup ads by force to the people of malware invasion is a perfect basis for evil-minded adjustments with the popup ads. And Puiont.com advertisements is one of hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.
Here is a summary for the Puiont site
Site | Puiont.com |
Hosting | AS39572 DataWeb Global Group B.V. Netherlands, Amsterdam |
Infection Type | Adware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads |
IP Address | 185.56.234.205 |
Symptoms | Annoying pop-up ads in the right corner. |
Similar behavior | Clickgate, Uxdes, G2news |
Fix Tool | To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC |
How have I got the Puiont virus?
There are a lot of methods of getting contaminated by the adware that create the Puiont popups storm. A lion’s part of this malware instances is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Free software can also be downloaded from the official site, and the adware is provided as a legal bundled program.
There is no need to blame yourself. A lot of people often use the unreliable programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, various tools that are free of cost, or even hacked programs. Every one of these kinds of programs are risky, because it is quite easy to include a Puiont 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.
Puiont popup virus can likewise be concealed in the promotion somewhere on the strange web page. Such websites are usually packed with intense and blinking ads, and their proprietors usually accept any type of promos to be posted on their web page. Thus, clicking on such banners is a shot in the dark: only the ad contractor knows what will happen when you press this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you can also get something far more damaging, like ransomware or coin miner; the large share of coin miners distribution is exactly after the malicious ads.
Potentially unwanted applications, like Puiont popup virus can initiate a lot of different problems on your computer. Distracting is not the single effect – pop-up notifications can display you the ads, where you are offered to get another dubious program, or “a perfect security tool”. Scareware is usually distributed under the last motto. Potentially undesirable programs, in turn, may have spyware functionality. And it is very 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 advertisements are also chosen as a distribution method by different trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of actions of such viruses is 100% unwanted, 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 whoever who also makes use of 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 and money loss. It is recommended to eliminate the viruses with antivirus programs as soon as possible.
How can I get rid of Puiont pop-up advertisements?
The manual of Puiont adware clearing includes 2 parts. First, we need to remove the malware, and then deal with the results of its action. The removal task is really simple, because it may be executed even with the use of Microsoft Defender – anti-virus software that is available on all computers with Windows 8/10. However, as a result of its significant resources usage, along with some problems that can be serious for some kinds of users, Defender is frequently disabled by the users, so its use is likely impossible. Moreover, different trojan viruses have the ability to shut off 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 antivirus tool that will certainly remove the viruses from your system and also make an invulnerable shield with a Proactive protection function. But let’s handle Puiont adware first.
Removing Puiont 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.
- 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.
- When the scan is over, you may choose the action for each detected virus. For all files of Puiont malware the default option is “Delete”. Press “Apply” to finish the malware removal.
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 :
- Open “Settings and more” tab in upper right corner, then find here “Settings” button. In the appeared menu, choose “Reset settings” option :
- 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 :
- Open Menu tab (three strips in upper right corner) and click the “Help” button. In the appeared menu choose “troubleshooting information” :
- In the next screen, find the “Refresh Firefox” option :
After choosing this option, you will see the next message :
If you use Google Chrome
- Open Settings tab, find the “Advanced” button. In the extended tab choose the “Reset and clean up” button :
- In the appeared list, click on the “Restore settings to their original defaults” :
- 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
- 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 :
- 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 definitely connect the proper DNS while connecting to the website you need. Make a text file named “hosts” on your desktop, after that open it and fill it with the following text3:
#
# 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 the things a lot more difficult to fix, especially without the anti-malware program. Most of adware variants that are used to show you the Puiont pop-up advertisements are modifying the deep browser configurations, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to change your browser settings after your PC was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly collapse quickly. In certain cases, you will see no crash, however, large lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 seconds, and after that it will be back to the typical, 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.
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.
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 Puiont Pop-ups?
Name: Puiont
Description: Puiont - 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 Puiont.com push notifications?” or “why do Puiont.com pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Puiont 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
User Review
( votes)References
- More about pop-up advertisements on Wikipedia.
- GridinSoft Anti-Malware overview and also the reasons why I advise it for malware elimination.
- Official Microsoft guide for hosts file reset.