This should be illegal

[The Vector Doctor]

this screen (see screen cap) popped up when i was visiting a website. The irony of it, is that I am on a Mac so it is impossible

The part that is annoying about it is that if this was on my parents computer, they would likely be duped into this message. Many people are just like them when it comes to their knowledge of computers. They are both over 60

It looks exactly like the screens from Windows

This is a screen cap from my browser

 

[J Hill Designs]

Oh dang - thats a bad virus to get on a PC...horrible in fact.

 

[The Vector Doctor]

I'm not on a pc. That's my point. It is a webpage disguise to look like a virus infection. When I close the window, it trys to run an .exe file which I am thankfully immune to

 

[OneUpTenn]

I totally agree with you!! The laws are certainly not strict enough on stuff like this. It makes me so freakin mad.

Anyway, yes I had that on my home computer once and pretty much lost everything. I sent screen shots like yours to Microsoft. I guess they didnt do anything with it.

 

[The Vector Doctor]

See it works. It sounds like 2 people are fooled

 

[Tharnpheffa]

Those b*st*rds. Malwarebytes removed it on my PC.

 

[signgal]

Holy cow!

 

[J Hill Designs]

No, no, I mean It's bad for a pc -- my boss got tricked earlier this summer - it was hell fixing it...

 

[The Vector Doctor]

make that 3

edit: ok maybe not, but you see my point

 

[Letterbox Mike]

Yeah, that's a nasty one, it got my wife, she didn't know any better and clicked something that let it install something. We had to reinstall windows on that computer, thankfully it was just our home laptop and nothing important was on it. We got the same thing on a computer here at the shop and fortunately we caught it before anyone clicked anything. Malwarebytes will kill it if you're in safemode, but we couldn't get it to run in normal mode, the virus prevented it from opening.

 

[RebeckaR]

Uh... I think Eric's point is that the pop up is a scam to get you to click on the link which will then send you to their site where they will try to sell you something to remove the virus that you don't actually have.

Some of these sites will give you the virus and then make you pay them to remove it.

People like my elderly parents are prime candidates for falling for something like this. Looks like a few here might be too.

 

[Kwiksigns]

i had a stupid virus once that bypassed my screensaver, took it of display properties, and made it the BSOD... Every 10 min away it would pop up.. for a couple days I was just stumped as to wtf was going on... all fixed though

 

[longbeachmichael]

i watched my co-worker fall for that exact same thing the other day, she fell for it, she clicked "ok" on every pop-up thinking that it was a valid "windows security" prompt and was going to "remove" the virus or trojans.

 

[The Vector Doctor]

Uh... I think Eric's point is that the pop up is a scam to get you to click on the link which will then send you to their site where they will try to sell you something to remove the virus that you don't actually have.

Some of these sites will give you the virus and then make you pay them to remove it.

People like my elderly parents are prime candidates for falling for something like this. Looks like a few here might be too.

Actually it downloaded a setup.exe file automatically. I did not click on a link. I just closed the window. That is the scary part

 

[tcorn1965]

Yes that is a nasty little bugger (for the PC). Yes stuff like this that scares the user into buying to be safe should be illegal.

 

[TheSnowman]

This is my favorite part.

 

[Pat Whatley]

I can not remember the current name of that piece of s*!t but it constantly shows back up under a different name. That's what started the disaster that cost me a hard drive last year. People like that need their testicles removed by dingos.

 

[GoodPeopleFlags]

That popped up on mine the other day and my coworkers a couple of months ago. Thankfully, neither of us fell for it. I can see how people would, tho. Is it just a random popup or does it have something to do with the site you're visiting at the time?

 

[Letterbox Mike]

Uh... I think Eric's point is that the pop up is a scam to get you to click on the link which will then send you to their site where they will try to sell you something to remove the virus that you don't actually have.

Some of these sites will give you the virus and then make you pay them to remove it.

People like my elderly parents are prime candidates for falling for something like this. Looks like a few here might be too.

No, it doesn't redirect you to a site to sell you something, it makes you think it's windows and it's found a virus, by clicking "remove" you think you're telling your computer to remove a virus but it actually installs all sorts of nasty stuff that's hard to remove. It automatically burrows into your system even without clicking anything and constantly pops up with this message, if you click it gets worse.

Honestly, if you didn't keep up with what viruses are out there, anybody could fall for this one, if you don't look really really carefully and just glanced at it you'd never know it wasn't really your windows anti-virus software.

 

[animenick65]

Those can be nasty and just plain annoying. Malwarebytes is great at killing stuff like this. As others noted, its best run in safemode. In fact, every couple of weeks everyone should run a virus scan in safemode. There are many things that anti-virus and anti-malware programs won't kill when run in standard mode.

I had something similar that kept deleting the malwarebytes executable when I was trying to install it. Quickly changing its name during installation helped.