Scam - Fake Settings Icon

Hello EmilyCowper,

If you're getting these on Safari, the best way to deal with them is just not allowing websites in Safari to use notifications.

1. Open Safari
2. Open Safari's Settings
3. Click Websites

Either set the options individually per website, as I did with Apple Newsroom (Deny), or toggle off the button at the bottom that says Allow websites to ask for permission to send notifications. If this is not checked, no website will be able to ask to send you notifications (denying by default). Any website above that you have set to Allow or Ask will continue to send you notifications.

As for that annoying fake Settings app, I'm not entirely sure🤔 I'd imagine it's in your Applications folder maybe?

1. Open Finder
2. Click Applications in the Sidebar
3. Anything suspicious / you don't recognize in there?

Additionally:

1. Open Finder
2. Click Go in the Menu Bar
3. Click Go to Folder...
4. Enter `~`
5. Click Applications and check here as well.

There are other places we can look as well, but this is where I'd start!

I would also do the following:

1. Open Settings
2. Click Privacy & Security

Go through the options here and make sure there is no suspicious/unknown apps requesting access to macOS features you don't know about. I would be worried/concerned with:

1. Camera
2. Microphone
3. Screen Recording
4. Input Monitoring
5. Location Services
6. Files and Folders
7. Full Disk Access
   1. Nothing should ever have this!!

Just an fyi, your Mac doesn't seen anti-virus software! It is very secure on its own. I would advise staying away from unknown websites and clicking on links/attachments from unknown senders.

If the above doesn't work, please let me know and we can look into other file locations!

Just to clarify, once you remove all websites from Safari's Settings > Websites > Notifications list, that should fix the problem.

Years ago, all Safari notifications displayed with a Safari logo. But at some point recently, Apple made an "improvement" and started displaying notifications with the icon of the website they come from. Obviously, the scam websites then changed their web site icon to be the system "gear" icon to better fool people.

Other than Safari's settings, I don't recommend making any other changes. You probably don't have any malicious software installed. If you make any other changes to System Settings, you are more likely to break something that you need.

For future info, there's no need to shut the computer down and turn it back on. Getting rid of the notification entries in Safari should immediately stop them.