Downloading AdBlock360
To install AdBlock360, click the file indicated
Is AdBlock360 Malware?
The Definitive Answer
The answer to this question is a categorical: No 
The official AdBlock360 desktop application is not malicious software or adware. It is a legitimate and 100% vetted desktop application designed to provide customers with a safe browsing experience free from adware.
AdBlock360 Is Safe: Separating Fact from Fiction
There has been some confusion surrounding this software due to inaccurate reports from security blogs and its mistaken identity with a different malicious browser extension that shares its name.
On this page, we provide the official response from the AdBlock360 development team, clarify this confusion, and demonstrate our commitment to the security and privacy of our users.
AdBlock360: Our Commitment to User Security
The security of our users is our highest priority, which is why we understand that seeing our name misspelled with terms like “malware” or “insecure” can be highly concerning. Here are the core facts about AdBlock360:
Transparency
Our application is validated and certified by the AppEsteem program, demonstrating our commitment to consumer protection. We ensure that our software meets the stringent requirements of such programs, which can be validated by searching for our software’s name on the official AppEsteem website
Free from Malware
Our application is 100% malware-free, as verified by its consistent passing of security scans from leading antivirus platforms, including VirusTotal. Every release is subjected to the same security and scanning process to ensure that no malicious software is present within our releases.
User Support
We are actively present and engaged with our user community on platforms like Reddit and other security forums. Here we answer technical questions and provide support to our customers, once again demonstrating our commitment to user support and feedback.
Privacy first
The AdBlock360 application does not track your browsing history, nor does it collect any personally identifiable information (PII). We may collect limited, anonymized data to improve the application's performance and stability. However, this data is never used to identify you. Our business model is not dependent on monetizing user data, and we are committed to the privacy of our users.
Not Adware
The AdBlock360 application has never engaged in activities associated with adware, such as intrusive pop-ups, malicious redirects, or unauthorized collection of user data. Reports are circulating online that refer to a completely different malicious application, which is not associated with our team or our product. While future versions of our product may include optional, user-controlled advertising features, we are committed to giving our customers control over these features and enabling them to disable them as needed. User choice is at the key of these choices that distinguishes us from adware.
AdBlock360 VS “AdBlock 360” - Clarifying the confusion
A common tactic in the cybersecurity landscape involves bad actors impersonating trusted brands by creating malicious software with similar names and branding. This is used to trick users and misuse the trust they place in the official brand present in the marketplace. For example, creating products with names like 'AdBlock,' 'Adblock Plus,' or 'uBlock Origin’ so that users mistakenly believe them to be legitimate products and install them.
This is, unfortunately, the reason why negative information is being spread about AdBlock 360. A fraudulent extension named “AdBlock 360” (please note the space, unlike our software) present on the Google Chrome store was used to mislead users and websites by impersonating our name. While marketplaces typically identify and remove these fake extensions, the articles and removal guides about them often remain online indefinitely despite being outdated.
This creates lasting confusion and unfairly damages the reputation of legitimate developers and companies that happen to share a similar name. The “AdBlock 360” malicious software has no connection to our product, company, or our values.
AdBlock 360 - A Malicious Browser Extension
This browser extension has been the subject of numerous negative articles from sources such as allaboutcookies.org, pcrisk.com, and wipersoft.com. Security companies and antivirus products correctly identified this malicious extension as adware or malware.
Its malicious activities include the following:
Injecting unwanted ads into websites.
Causing unexpected browser redirects to questionable sites.
Installing other potentially unwanted programs (PUPs) without user consent.
Affecting system performance, resulting in a slowdown.
AdBlock360 Is Not Affiliated with the Fraudulent Extension
As mentioned earlier, this malicious extension has no affiliation with our company or our product. We did not develop this fraudulent extension and
have absolutely no affiliation with our company or the official AdBlock360 software.
Our Official Product - AdBlock360
In contrast to the malicious browser extension referred to above, our official AdBlock360 is a standalone desktop application for Windows and not a browser extension.
It is distributed exclusively from our official website and installed using a digitally signed installer file.
We designed AdBlock360 as a desktop application for a crucial reason: to provide a more powerful and future-proof ad-blocking solution. The landscape for browser extensions is undergoing a dramatic shift. Upcoming technical updates to browsers, collectively known as Manifest V3 (MV3), are designed to limit the capabilities of traditional ad-blocking extensions. These restrictions limit the number of filtering rules an extension can use and its ability to block requests, significantly weakening its effectiveness in a dynamic environment.
Our standalone application architecture was explicitly chosen to overcome these limitations. By operating at the system level, AdBlock360 filters internet traffic before it even reaches your browser.
This allows it to:
Block ads more effectively across all of your browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Edge, etc.) without needing separate installations for each.
Remain immune to the Manifest V3 restrictions that are hindering browser extensions.
Provide a more robust, consistent, and reliable ad-blocking experience that puts you, the user, back in control.
This fundamental difference in architecture is key. The very thing that makes our application different from the malicious extension — being a desktop app — is what makes it a superior and more resilient ad-blocking tool for the modern internet.
Our Commitment to Security and Transparency
We don't just ask you to trust us; we provide verifiable proof of our safety and our commitment to ethical software development. Our software is continuously monitored and audited to ensure it is free from any malicious code, and we operate with complete transparency. You can verify our safety through the same independent, third-party tools used by cybersecurity professionals.
| Validation Service | Status | Details & Verification Link |
|---|---|---|
| VirusTotal | Clean | Our official domain, adblock360.com, and our installer consistently show zero flags from major security vendors. We encourage users to verify this themselves |
| AppEsteem | Certified | We are proud to be certified by AppEsteem, a leading organization dedicated to consumer protection in the software industry. This certification confirms our commitment to ethical advertising, transparent installation, and user-first design principles. Certification page on AppEsteem's |
| Malwarebytes | Whitelisted | We have actively collaborated with security vendors, such as Malwarebytes, to resolve any "false positive" flags. These flags sometimes occur because of our software's powerful system-level filtering, which can mislead heuristic scanners. Our engagement on their forums has led to whitelisting. |
Users may encounter notifications from platforms like any.run that flag "suspicious" activity, like the use of PowerShell during installation. This is not an indicator of malware but legitimate behavior from our application. To provide system-wide ad blocking, AdBlock360 sets up a local proxy service on your computer.
The installer uses standard and safe Windows tools, including PowerShell scripts, to configure this local proxy service efficiently.
This behavior is expected and necessary for the software to function as designed, and it is fully transparent. Malicious programs use these tools to harm a system; we use them to protect it.
Our Commitment to Privacy
Just as our commitment to security is absolute and non-negotiable, our commitment to privacy is also absolute and non-negotiable. AdBlock360 was built from the ground up with a privacy-first mindset. Our privacy guarantees are as follows:
We DO NOT collect or log any of your personally identifiable information.
We DO NOT sell or share your data with any third parties.
Our application includes NO hidden tracking or telemetry.
We DO NOT monitor, record, or store your browsing history
(NOTE: To block ads effectively, AdBlock360 may log anonymized technical data, such as the domains where our ad-blocking engine was activated. This information is PII-free and not used to track
individuals or individual user behavior across sites.)
The purpose of our application is to block ads and trackers, not to become one. For a complete breakdown of our data handling practices, please read our full Privacy Policy.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
To further alleviate any remaining concerns, here are direct answers to the most common questions from our customers:
- Yes. The official AdBlock360 is 100% safe. It is independently verified by security tools like VirusTotal and is developed in adherence with AppEsteem's stringent consumer protection standards. It contains no malware, adware, or trackers.
- No. AdBlock360 is a legitimate and powerful ad-blocking software. It is often confused with an unrelated, malicious browser extension that once used a similar name but has since been removed from app stores. Our software is a standalone desktop application with a proven clean security record.
- This is known as a "false positive." Some security programs may flag AdBlock360 as a "Potentially Unwanted Program" (PUP) because our installer requires system-level access to block ads effectively across all browsers. This advanced behavior can look suspicious to automated heuristic scanners, but it is a necessary part of how our influential ad-blocking works. We are actively working with security vendors to get our software whitelisted and eliminate these false flags.
- Administrator rights are required to install the local filtering service that allows AdBlock360 to block ads at the system level. This is a normal and necessary step for applications that provide system-wide functionality, such as VPNs or system-level firewalls. We only use these permissions to set up the ad-blocking engine and for no other purpose.
- No, because the official AdBlock360 has never been a Chrome extension and has never been listed on the Chrome Web Store. You are likely thinking of the unrelated, malicious extension that Google correctly removed for policy violations. Our product is a standalone desktop application that can be downloaded exclusively from our official website.
- Yes. Services like VirusTotal continuously scan our software and show a clean bill of health. Furthermore, we are committed to and certified by AppEsteem, an independent organization that audits software to ensure it is safe and transparent for consumers.
- Most ad blockers are browser extensions and are becoming less effective due to new browser rules like Google's Manifest V3. AdBlock360 is a standalone desktop application that is immune to these restrictions. This allows it to provide more powerful, system-wide ad and tracker blocking across all your applications, not just a single browser.