ALOT Toolbar is promoted as a legitimate search-related tool. However, the truth is that it is a malicious adware, which constantly produces unwanted ads and often redirects search results to malicious websites.
Cyber criminals do not seize to create scams that target unsuspecting users. Some of them aim at making the victim pay for a fake program. The case with ALOT Toolbar is different – it is a piece of adware, which is used to promote others, more dangerous viruses.
Figure 1. ALOT Toolbar homepage
Since ALOT Toolbar promises to provide them with useful search help, some users are tricked into installing it. As soon as it gets settled, it immediately shows its real face – it starts displaying a variety of advertisements and changes the victim’s homepage. What is even more, it redirects the user’s search to potentially dangerous websites, which promote other hacker inventions. In some cases, the malicious webpage may not even look suspicious and some people get tricked into clicking through it. This is enough for the Trojan pieces, hidden in it, to get installed on the computer by exploiting vulnerabilities found in its system. Unfortunately, when entering machines, Trojans do not seek the user’s authorization and, in most cases, the victim is not even aware that the viruses have crept inside the computer.
ALOT Toolbar also tries to interfere with your browsing process in order to increase the traffic of given websites. To do so, it uses a very subtle technique – it places the wanted URLs, instead of the ones the user tries to write, into the browser navigation bar by pretending to be correcting spelling.
Most commonly, the homepage that ALOT Toolbar places is ask.com, because the adware tries to raise the traffic of this website. Once ask.dom becomes your homepage, it is really difficult to change it back to your old one.
ALOT Toolbar is also capable of hiding its folders and files. In order to view the hidden folders, you should go to:
Tools -> Folder Options -> View tab -> Show hidden files, folders, and drives
Trying to remove the adware from Add/Remove Programs in the Control Panel is not always successful. Furthermore, uninstalling ALOT Toolbar through the browser’s add-ons management may not completely eliminate all the malicious files, connected with the malware.
Though ALOT Toolbar employs clever hacker tactics to achieve its goals, it is not a malware piece that is hard for anti-virus programs to remove. The most important thing your should remember when it comes to removing the adware is to close all tabs in your browsers before starting your anti-virus tool; otherwise, the detecting and removal of ALOT Toolbar may not be successful. Then, run a full scan of your system and the AV vendor can do the rest.
Please note that adware pieces such as ALOT Toolbar are scattered everywhere. An efficient prevention method, when it comes to such infections, is to avoid following suspicious links or downloading files with shady origin. Most importantly, however, you should always check the legitimacy of the programs prior their installation on your computer.
*SpyHunter’s free scanner is only for malware detection. If SpyHunter detects malware on your PC, you will need to purchase SpyHunter’s malware suite to remove the malware threats.