RockDriller.top Ads Notifications Removal

Rockdriller.top pop-up notifications appear out of the blue, bothering and annoying you. Still, that is way more than just notifications – their nature is cleanly malignant, and they may install other malware to your device. In this post, I will show you how to remove Rockdriller.top pop-up advertisements and explain how to avoid them in the future.

Any time you interact with Rockdriller.top pop-ups will be useless at best. At worst, the websites it can show you may introduce malware to your system. These pop-up notifications may also advertise fake online shopping websites which will take your money and payment info. The latter generally ends up with losing all the money you have on the exposed card.

What are Rockdriller.top pop-ups?

Short summary of the Rockdriller.top pop-ups:
Name Rockdriller.top
Hosting AS47846 SEDO GmbH
Germany, Köln
IP Address 64.190.63.111
Malware type Adware1
Effect Unwanted pop-up advertisements
Hazard level Medium
Malware source Apps from third-party websites, ads on dubious websites
Similar behavior Tomp3, Bajers, Gruffermail
Removal method
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

Rockdriller.top pop-up advertisements, as opposed, are related to unlegit sites. You will commonly observe the offer to turn them on following the redirection from another site. It’s OK to see redirects unless it throws you to such a questionable place. At that point, enabling pop-up notifications is served under the guise of the anti-bot filtering. Alternatively, the sites can deny showing you the content unless you turn on these pop-up notifications. These requirements should raise suspicion, as sites commonly feature a less obscure anti-bot mechanism. Witnessing this demand should be the reason to close the website right away. In some cases, even after clicking “Allow”, you will not get to the website – the sole page it has is a landing page with the offer to turn on the pop-up advertisements.

Rockdriller.top push notification

Rockdriller.top push notification.

How does it work?

The vast majority of browsers support turning on push notifications from websites. Sites, on the other hand, may send out notifications with the content of their choice. It may be an advertisement of the product published on this site, as well as a promotion of their partner page. As a result, you can see the pop-up from site X, but opening it will redirect you to website Y – because a referral link to the latter was added.

The banners these crooks show are paid under the pay-per-view model. It usually provides a miserable commission for one person, but when you can send ads to hundreds of users and make it hundreds of times each day – that is a way bigger sum. Even though the majority of these banners giving no result at all, it may still give all the participants a lot of money.

Are Rockdriller.top pop-up notifications dangerous?

Yes, they are. Initially, they can look non-threatening – just a blinking pop-up that appears a couple times in an hour. However, the things this window promotes differ drastically from what you used to see in pop-up ads. Rockdriller.top website is ruled by crooks, who intentionally spread tons of irrelevant ads in pop-ups. They also never follow any common sense and can make sporadic push notifications into a hurricane of promotions. For weak computers, that may be enough to cause performance issues. But problems are not over at this point.

Why people dislike popups

How to remove Rockdriller.top pop-ups?

Initially, you should reset your browser settings. You can do that in both manual and automatic manner. The former, obviously, requires more time to complete and can be somewhat complicated if you have never done that. Automated supposes the use of anti-malware programs that can reset all browser settings at once.

Reset your browsers manually

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:
  4. RockDriller removal step 3
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. RockDriller Ads Removal 1
  3. In the appeared list, click on the “Restore settings to their original defaults”:
  4. RockDriller Ads Removal 2
  5. Finally, you will see the window, where you can see all the settings which will be reset to default:
  6. RockDriller Ads Removal 3
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. RockDriller in Opera
  3. After clicking the “Restore settings…” button, you will see the window, where all settings, which will be reset, are shown:
  4. RockDriller Ads In Opera

When the browsers are reset, you need to ensure that your browser will connect the right DNS while connecting to the site you need. Create a text file titled “hosts” on your pc’s desktop, then open it and fill it with the following lines2:


# 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.

Scan your system for possible viruses

Once the scan is complete, you will see the detections or a notification about a clean system. Proceed with pressing the Clean Up button (or OK when nothing is detected).

References

  1. Official Microsoft guide for hosts file reset.

About the author

Wilbur Woodham

Technical writer covering malware detections, unwanted programs, and browser-based threats. Wilbur turns research notes into step-by-step guides that Windows users can follow safely.

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