Top-articles.xyz Ads Removal Guide — How to Fix It?

Written by Wilbur Woodham

Unwanted Top-articles.xyz pop-up notices can show up out of the blue, covering the content of the page you explored or opening your web browser when you don’t desire it to be opened. Clicking the Top-articles.xyz pop-up ad may trigger the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this article, you will see the guideline of Top-articles.xyz popups clearing in a couple of methods, as well as examining your personal computer for additional viruses existence.

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What are Top-articles.xyz pop-ups?

Top-articles.xyz popups are a result of adware presence. Adware is a kind of malware that demonstrates to you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click promotions, which produces a large volume of revenue for adware distributors. These advertisements may consist of explicit composition, or have a web link to malicious content/website, because adware maintainers have no purpose to examine the goodness of the web content they are going to show – their solitary target is money.

Top-articles.xyz push notification

Top-articles.xyz push notification.

Pop-up promotions itself is a very good, low-priced and also extremely efficient marketing method1 It enables the vendor to attach the customers’ interest to their site, as well as the buyers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they want to purchase. When the customer will receive a pop-up notification that the TV set he desires to buy is provided at the online shop he/she saw previously with a 15% discount, one will definitely use this opportunity and get it. Taking into consideration the incredibly low cost for the popups and their targeting, such a marketing method is a favorite thing among the advertising teams of big internet stores.

Nevertheless, such a profitable strategy could not be missed by malware developers. Ability to demonstrate the popup advertisements forcibly to the people of malware attack is an ideal basis for evil-minded manipulations with the popup ads. And Top-articles.xyz promotions is one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a short details for the Top-articles.xyz
SiteTop-articles.xyz
HostingAS15317 Serverel Inc.
United States, San Jose
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address173.214.250.52
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorElyestabbey.top, Tomachopan.com, Dexchangegenius.com
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Top-articles.xyz virus?

There are a lot of ways of becoming infected by the adware that result in the Top-articles.xyz popups tornado. A lion’s part of this computer virus instances is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Free software may also be downloaded from the official web page, and the adware is offered as a legitimate bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A number of individuals frequently work with the unreliable programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, various utilities that are free, and even hacked programs. All of these types of applications are risky, due to the fact that it is extremely simple to build in a Top-articles.xyz malware under the guise of part of the license hacking script, or as a component of the self-made algoritm within the Windows optimization tool.

Top-articles.xyz popup malware may also be hidden in the promotion somewhere on the strange website. Such sites are generally packed with intense and blinking advertisements, and their proprietors generally approve any promotions to be placed on their page. Thus, clicking 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 receive something far more dangerous, like ransomware or coin miner; the big 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

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

The guide of Top-articles.xyz adware removal includes 2 parts. First, we need to get rid of the malware, and after that take care of the consequences of its action. The removal task is very simple, because it may be done even with using Microsoft Defender – anti-virus software that is present on all computers with Windows 8/10. Nonetheless, as a result of its huge resources utilization, along with some bugs that can be serious for some types of individuals, Defender is often turned off by the users, so its usage is most likely impossible. Additionally, different trojan viruses can disable 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 anti-malware device that will certainly wipe out the malware from your PC and create an invulnerable cover with a Proactive protection feature. However, let’s handle Top-articles.xyz adware initially.

Removing Top-articles.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 Top-articles.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 browser will definitely connect the right DNS while connecting to the web page you want. Make a text file titled “hosts” on your computer’s desktop, after that open it and fill it with the following lines3:

# 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.

Nevertheless, there is one problem that makes the things much harder to restore, specifically without the anti-malware program. The majority of adware variants that are utilized to show you the Top-articles.xyz pop-up promotions are altering the deep browser setups, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to change your browser settings after your PC was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly crash soon. In certain cases, you will see no crash, but huge lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 seconds, and then it will be back to the typical, till you try to open settings once again.

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 Top-articles.xyz Pop-ups?

Name: Top-articles.xyz

Description: Top-articles.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 Top-articles.xyz push notifications?” or “why do Top-articles.xyz pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Top-articles.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 the reasons why I advise 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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