Total-block.net Ads Removal Guide — How to Fix It?

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Total-block.net pop-up notices can appear out of the blue, covering the subject of the website you went to or opening your browser when you do not need it to be opened.

Clicking on the Total-block.net advertisement can lead to the injection of different malware or unwanted programs. In this guide, you will see the manual of Total-block.net popups removal in various manners, and also checking your system for other viruses existence.

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What are Total-block.net pop-ups?

Total-block.net popups are a consequence of adware presence. Adware is a sort of malware that demonstrates to you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click promotions, which creates a massive amount of income for adware distributors. These promotions might have sometimes shocking composition, or have a web link to malevolent content/website, considering that adware maintainers have no reason to examine the goodness of the web content they are going to reveal – their solitary target is money.

Total-block.net push notification

Total-block.net push notification.

Pop-up promotions itself is an excellent, low-priced and very successful advertising instrument1. It allows the vendor to attach the customers’ interest to their website, and the customers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they intend to purchase. When the customer will receive a pop-up notification that the TV set he desires to purchase is available at the online shop he/she saw previously with a 15% discount, one will undoubtedly use this possibility and buy it. Considering the incredibly low price for the popups and their targeting, such a marketing method is a favourite thing amongst the marketing departments of big internet retailers.

Nonetheless, such a rewarding system could not be missed by malware developers. Option to demonstrate the popup ads forcibly to the people of malware attack is an excellent basis for malicious tricks with the popup advertisements. And Total-block.net promotions is one of hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a short summary for the Total-block.net site
SiteTotal-block.net
HostingAS13335 Cloudflare, Inc.
United States, San Francisco
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address104.21.34.88
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorNews, Alfabet, News
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Total-block.net virus?

There are a number of ways of becoming infected by the adware that trigger the Total-block.net 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. Freeware can also be downloaded from the main web page, and the adware is offered as a legal bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A lot of users regularly work with the dubious programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, a wide range of apps that are free of cost, or perhaps hacked programs. All of these types of programs are unsafe, due to the fact that it is quite easy to integrate a Total-block.net malware under the cover of part of the license hacking script, or as a component of the self-made algoritm within the Windows optimization tool.

Total-block.net popup malware can likewise be concealed in the advertisement somewhere on the strange site. Such websites are typically loaded with bright and blinking advertisements, and their owners typically accept any promotions to be posted on their page. For this reason, clicking such banners is a shot in the dark: only the advertisement provider realizes what will occur when you click this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you may likewise get something far more unsafe, like ransomware or coin miner; the substantial share of coin miners distribution is exactly after the malicious promotions.

People dislike popups

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

Potentially unwanted programs, like Total-block.net pop-up virus may cause a variety of different troubles on your computer. Distracting is not the only effect – pop-ups may display you the ads, where you are offered to download one more dubious program, or “a amazing anti-malware tool”. Scareware is often spread with the last slogun. Potentially unwanted applications, in turn, may have spyware functions. And it is pretty hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a normal one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and pseudo antiviruses, popup-related promotions are also used as a distribution way by different trojan viruses, for instance – coin miners. The consequences of actions of such viruses is 100% unpleasant, and can cost you several hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not tapping these advertisements, they may be clicked by whoever who also makes use of your personal computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the things can become much more serious, and it will be much harder to deal with it without data loss. It is recommended to get rid of the viruses with anti-malware programs as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Total-block.net pop-up advertisements?

The guide of Total-block.net adware elimination contains 2 parts. First, we need to deal with the malware, and afterwards take care of the consequences of its activity. The elimination procedure is pretty easy, because it may be executed even with making use of Microsoft Defender – anti-malware software that is available on all computers with Windows 8/10. Nonetheless, because of its large resources consumption, along with some problems that may be serious for some kinds of individuals, Defender is oftentimes turned off by the users, so its utilization is most likely impossible. What’s more, a wide range of trojan viruses are capable to turn off the embedded antivirus. It is far better to use the separated program that will not have such vulnerabilities.

I would certainly suggest you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven anti-malware tool that will certainly exterminate the viruses from your PC and also make an impenetrable shield with a Proactive protection function. However, let’s take care of Total-block.net adware first.

Removing Total-block.net 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 Total-block.net 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 browsers are reset, you need to make sure that your browser will definitely connect the appropriate DNS while connecting to the site you want. Make a text file named “hosts” on your 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.

However, there is one problem that makes things much harder to fix, especially without the anti-malware program. The majority of adware versions that are used to show you the Total-block.net pop-up advertisements are changing 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 crash soon. Sometimes, you will see no crash, however, significant lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 seconds, and then it will be back to the typical, until you attempt 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 Total-block.net Pop-ups?

Name: Total-block.net

Description: Total-block.net - 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 Total-block.net push notifications?” or “why do Total-block.net pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Total-block.net 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 advertisements on Wikipedia.
  2. GridinSoft Anti-Malware review and the reasons why I suggest 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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