Antanna “Virus” Removal (Chrome/FF/IE)

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Welcome to our Antanna “Virus” removal guide. The following instructions will aid you in removing the unwanted software from your PC.

Browser hijackers are notorious for their ability to disrupt your browsing and spoil your online experience. They are especially well known for appearing out of the blue and catching users completely unaware, whilst inducing various undesired changes to the users browsers, be it Chrome, Firefox, Edge, IE or another of the popular browsing programs. These changes typically include a new homepage and a new default search engine, which will often redirect your search requests to various sponsored webpages. What’s more, users often find themselves unable to do anything whatsoever to reverse those changes and reinstate their old settings. No matter what you do: re-install your browser, try setting a different homepage over and over again, you will still keep on opening your browser to find the settings set by the browser hijacker. In this article we will tell you everything you need to know about this particular type of programs and how to fight them on the example of Antanna “Virus”. Stick around and find out how you can remove the nasty program, along with all its undesired changes.

What browser hijackers do and why

We already pointed out the most obvious traits of a browser hijacker, but the main question remains: what’s the point of it all? Well, this software category typically serves the online marketing industry and in doing so it is responsible for the generation and distribution of numerous online advertising materials. For example, you may have noticed that your screen becomes covered with a plethora of popups, banners, in-text links and box messages each time you open your browser. The numerous redirections that programs like Antanna tend to cause, as well as the newly set default search engines are also means of promoting and advertising certain goods and services. And all of this is, of course, done in the name of profit. The developers of such programs benefit from the paid clicks on all these ads based on a popular remuneration system called Pay Per Click.

Thanks to this principle, browser hijacker developers often program their creations such as Antanna to pry into the user’s browsing patterns and extract certain information from their browsing history. For example, your search requests and the kind of content you like and share on social media may be of interest. In addition, the websites you most visit, as well your bookmarked or favorited pages may also let the invasive program know a little more about you as an individual and where your interests lie. All this information is later used to modify the flow of ads and tailor it to each individual user. That way the program increases its chances of you actually clicking on the displayed ads.

Potential risks

As pointed out above, programs like Antanna do tend to use rather shady and controversial techniques, which is mainly what has earned them the title of potentially unwanted programs or PUP’s. That’s not to say that these programs are viruses or in any way comparable to actual malware, such as ransomware and Trojans. Despite not being viruses, they still possess qualities that make their presence rather undesirable. The practice of monitoring your browsing patterns is most certainly a privacy invasion, on the one hand. But more importantly, browser hijackers rely on tricky distribution methods in order to get installed on users’ PCs. Most often this is true, because no one will go out of their way to download and install an ad-generating program that will also be recording their every online step. Thus, their developers usually bundle them with other programs that are more likely to be sought out by regular users. These program bundles are primarily distributed for free on various open source download and file-sharing platforms. Once you download a program bundle, you are likely to be unaware that it is in fact a bundle. However, in order to prevent any other components of that bundle from being installed on your computer, you will need to customize the installation process of the respective program you want to use. Most people neglect this and end up installing the whole bundle by default, often including hijackers like Antanna, adware and other PUPs. You can manually adjust the installation and leave out any unwanted components by utilizing the advanced or custom settings of the installation wizard.

Antanna “Virus” Removal

I – Safe mode and revealing hidden files

1. Boot your PC into Safe Mode /link/
2. Reveal hidden files and folders /link/

II – Uninstallation

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1. Use the Winkey+R keyboard combination, write Control Panel in the search field and hit enter.
   
2. Go to Uninstall a program under Programs.
   
3. Seek the unwanted software, select it and then click on Uninstall

If you are unable to spot Antanna, search for any unrecognized programs that you do not remember installing on your PC – the unwanted software might disguise itself by going under a different name.

III – Cleaning all your browsers

1. Go to your browser’s icon, right-click on it and select Properties.
   
2. Go to the Shortcut tab and in the Target make sure to delete anything written after “.exe”.
   
3. Now, open your browser and follow the instructions below depending on whether you are using Chrome, Mozilla or IE.

• Chrome users:

1. Go to your browser’s main menu located in the top-right corner of the screen and select Settings.
   
2. Scroll down, click on Show Advanced Settings and then select Clear browsing data. Just to be sure, tick everything and clear the data.
   
3. Now, in the left pane, go to Extensions and look through all extensions that are integrated within your browser. If you notice any suspicious add-on, disable it and then remove it.
   

• Firefox users:

1. Similarly to Chrome, go to the main menu and select Add-ons and then Extensions.
2. Remove any suspicious browser extensions that you may have even if they do not have the name Antanna on them.

• IE users:

1. Go to Tools and select Manage add-ons.
   
2. Click on all add-on types from the left pane and check if there is anything suspicious in the right panel. In case you find anything shade, make sure to remove it.

IV – Removing Shady processes

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1. Go to your start menu, type Task Manager in the search field and from the results open View running processes with Task Manager.
   
2. Thoroughly look through all processes. The name Antanna might not be there, but if you notice any shady looking process that consumes high amounts of memory it might be ran by the unwanted program.
3. If you spot the process ran by Antanna, right-click on it, open its file location and delete everything in there. Then go back to the Task Manager and end the process.
   

V – DNS check

1. In the start menu search box write View Network Connections and open the first result.
   
2. Right-click on the network connection you are using and go to Properties.
   
3. Select Internet Protocol Version (TCP/IPv4) and click on Properties.
   
4. If Obtain DNS server addresses automatically is not checked, check it.
   
5. Go to Advanced and select the DNS If there is anything in the DNS server addresses field, remove it and click OK.
   
6. Click OK on the rest of the opened windows.