Remove Ad.doubleclick.net Virus — How to Remove?

Interacting the Ad.doubleclick.net promotion can result in the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this article, you will see the manual of Ad.doubleclick.net popups removal in multiple methods, and also inspecting your PC for additional malware existence.

What is a Ad.doubleclick.net website?

The appearance of Ad.doubleclick.net website is an effect of adware action. Adware is a type of malware that demonstrates to you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click promotions, which produces a large volume of revenue for adware representatives. These ads may include explicit information, or have a web link to harmful 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 cash.

The ad.doubleclick.net page and pop-up notification

The Ad.doubleclick.net website is just another page that contains malicious advertisements. Clicking on them, or interacting with them in any other way is dangerous, as it can have a lot of unpleasant consequences. Aside from the aforementioned malware installation, it can throw you to another advertising page, which has no content besides endless banners. Touching it, as well as seeing it, is very, very unpleasant. For each person who opens the page, the crooks receive a penny – a pretty small reward, but when you can forcibly show it to thousands of people, things become way more attractive.

Site	Ad.doubleclick.net
Hosting	AS15169 Google LLC Germany, Frankfurt am Main
Infection Type	Adware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address	142.250.185.134
Symptoms	Constant redirections to the website, or its opening in a random situation.
Similar behavior	Tamus, Testserverlp, Avics
Fix Tool	GridinSoft Anti-MalwareTo remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Ad.doubleclick.net virus?

There are a plenty of ways of becoming contaminated by the adware that result in seeing the Ad.doubleclick.net website. A lion’s part of these malware cases is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Freeware can also be downloaded from the official website, and the adware is supplied as a legally bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. Plenty of individuals regularly work with dubious programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, different utilities that are free of cost, and even hacked programs. Every one of these types of programs is unsafe, due to the fact that it is extremely easy to include an Ad.doubleclick.net malware under the cover of part of the license hacking script, or as a component of the self-made algorithm inside of the Windows optimization tool.

Ad.doubleclick.net popup virus can also be concealed in the promotion somewhere on the strange website. Such web pages are usually full of intense and blinking advertisements, and their proprietors typically permit any type of promotions to be placed on their web page. For this reason, clicking such banners is a shot in the dark: only the ad contractor knows what will happen when you press this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you can additionally get something a lot more dangerous, like ransomware or coin miner; the large share of coin miners circulation is exactly after the malicious promotions.

The typical view of a page like the ad.doubleclick.net

Potentially unwanted applications, like Ad.doubleclick.net virus may cause a lot of troubles on your PC. Distracting is not the single problem – the site may show you the promotions, where you are offered to get one more dubious program, or “a amazing anti-malware tool”. Scareware is often spread with the use of the last motto. PUPs, in turn, may have spyware functionality. And it is quite hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a good one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and fake antiviruses, popup-related advertisements are also exploited as a distribution way by different trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of actions of such viruses is 100% unwanted, and can cost you several hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not tapping these banners, they may be clicked by someone who also uses your PC – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the situation may become much more serious, and it will be much harder to solve it without data loss. It is recommended to wipe out the viruses with anti-malware programs as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Ad.doubleclick.net adware?

The manual of Ad.doubleclick.net adware removal contains 2 sections. First, we need to deal with the malware, and after that take care of the consequences of its action. The elimination procedure is very simple, since it can be performed even with making use of Microsoft Defender – security program that is available on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, due to its significant resources consumption, along with some defects that can be critical for some types of individuals, Defender is often turned off by the users, so its usage is most likely impossible. What’s more, various trojan viruses have the ability to turn off the embedded antivirus. It is better to use the separated program that will not have such weakness.

I’d recommend you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware¹ – a well-proven antivirus device that will surely eliminate the malware from your system and create an invulnerable shield with a Proactive protection function. But let’s deal with Ad.doubleclick.net adware first.

Download GridinSoft Anti-Malware

Removing Ad.doubleclick.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.
• 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 Ad.doubleclick.net 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

1. Open “Settings and more” tab in upper right corner, then find here “Settings” button. In the appeared menu, choose “Reset settings” option :
2. After picking the Reset Settings option, you will see the following menu, stating about the settings which will be reverted to original :

1. Open Menu tab (three strips in upper right corner) and click the “Help” button. In the appeared menu choose “troubleshooting information” :
2. In the next screen, find the “Refresh Firefox” option :

After choosing this option, you will see the next message :

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 :

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 browser will be connected the appropriate DNS while connecting to the web page you want. Make a text file named “hosts” on your desktop, then open it and fill it with the following text²:

# 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 things a lot harder to fix, particularly without the anti-malware software. A lot of adware versions that are used to show you the Ad.doubleclick.net page are modifying the deep browser setups, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to fix your browser settings after your computer was penetrated by adware, your browser will collapse quickly. Sometimes, you will see no crash, however, significant lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 seconds, and afterwards it will be back to the normal, 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.

References

1. GridinSoft Anti-Malware review and the reasons why I suggest it for malware removal.
2. Official Microsoft guide for hosts file reset.