safari locked by 'prizegiveaway.org' pop-up box - how can I clear this without opening/activating the pop-up ?

Are you running Lion?

I have the same problem. I bought my first Mac yesterday and was searching for the answer to a question I had and went on a site called mac life and this popup appeared.

I am using Lion on a new mac mini.

I have managed to remove the popup.

I pressed the option key while quitting safari. This closed all the windows except the popup, so I did a force quit on safari and now the popup doesn't appear when I open safari.

What can I do to make sure nothing malicious has been installed?

First Quit Safari:

On LION :

GoTo : - Finder /user Library/Preferences/com.apple.Safari.plist ( move to trash )

Restart Mac

Launch safari : Enable pop-up blocker

Issue resolved 🙂

Have a friend who has the same problem. I saw this answer and tried to talk her through it. However in the preferences folder there is no .safari.plist item. I have checked my own folder and I too do not have a .plist for safari. I ran a search in finder and found nothing?? What could the situation be??

Many thanks

Dave from Ireland

Hi, i had the same problem and then had to come on ok to continue. As the safari still could not stop, I have safari killed by task or finder. After a restart of safari was the page again but there again and I repeated the process but expressed after start of the safari ESC key. Since I come from the windows world, I'm now worried about the safety of my mac or is already at this point, malware has been transferred to my Mac? Do I put on these new or a Mac can not be infected so easily? In the future I will turn off, however, Java and Java Script.

Hi MacDirk,

Congratulations on moving from the "dark side". I understand your worry however I do not think you need to worry. I solved this problem whic was as a result of this problem popup.

Simply do the following

1. Quit Safari

2 In FINDER ( Apple menu top left) HOLD DOWN the "alt" (option ) key

3. You will see a list to the right of the apple, move over to the GO tab and click

4. You will see the folder called LIBRARY

5. You will get a list of folders

6. Go to the one called PREFERENCES

7. Scroll dow to the one called "com.apple.Safari.plist"

8. Drag it to the trash and empty the trash

9. Restart Safari and all should be OK

Hope this helps

Dave from Ireland

Hi Dave,

I have tried as you suggested, but with no luck. I have done everything but still have this stupid prizegiveaway.org blocking my Safari - do you have any other suggestions ? Thanks for anything you can do. By the way I am running Lion.

I too couldn't fix this using the instructions above as i could not find the library/folders they they were talking about. However, I done a spotlight search for Safari and opened the Safari folder and then I noticed the safari bookmarks had been updated so I deleted all bookmarks and that cured the problem.

Thanks Graham, I persevered with the problem, finally got it fixed - also deleting bookmarks. I think the trick to get the library up to find preferences in the instructions above is that you press the alt key on go and library magically appears. What ever I did when Safari finally came back up - I had lost my home page, safari was reset, and pop ups blocked.

🙂 thanks again Sue

5.1.3

Lion

The following works. Trashing the plist file, unfortunately doesn't.

Ensure Safari is closed

Disconnect your mac from the internet - In my case I disconnected the wifi.

Open Safari

Select Safari

Select reset Safari

Ensure all boxes are ticked and click reset on the popup

(It may work in itself up to this point, I didn't check as I was having my parents do it, over the phone)

I went on to empty the cache, reset the home page in preferences and ensured new pages and tabs opened as a blank window.

All you need to do is hold down the option key when your quit Safari or the shift key when launching it.

This works for me!

(Holding down shift key while restarting)

Thanks, that worked!

Thank you QuickTimeKirk!

Holding the shift key down while opening Safari resolved the problem.

Cheers.