My iMac keeps saying "Congratulations you won"

I just (5 minutes ago) got rid of this on my macbook. Its a flash add that was running in safari here and there - a flashing rectangular add with a happy face in it. I forgot to take a screenshot before getting rid of it - sorry.

Here's what I did:

Go to the adobe flash player settings manager - google it if you don't want to trust my link:

http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_man ager07.html

If you've never used it before, that is actually it running on the web page. Go to the "Website storage settings panel" (second tab from the right - a file folder with a green arrow pointing into it). I clicked the "delete all sites" button. Then I restarted Safari. So far, no more "Congratulations". Hope this helps.

Cheers,

M

Try what MatthewDJ says. I've used that site. While it is a public web page it actually edits the flash cookies on your machine. Alternatively the later versions of flash also install a preference pane which you probably have. I think you can delete the flash cookies with the prefpane too (Storage, Delete All...). Doing this will probably mean you have to type passwords to all sites where you have flagged to remember passwords but that no big deal (well, unless you don't remember the passwords of course).

I hope this works because then it would save me having to look at all those startup items I asked you to post.😉

Glad to hear it.

Cheers,

M

I hope it is fixed this time. Good luck.

Sigh 😕

Before trying to see if it is any of your startup items you listed earlier (and by the way you didn't list your login items back then so please post those too) is it possible for you to run with another account for a while? If you can and the words continue could you run by booting in safe mode? Safe mode boot will suppress all the startup items and login items (clear a few caches too). That's why I qualified these requests with "if you can".

I don't know whether you need all these to run minimally or not. But these tests are a quick way to determine if any of these guys is a possible suspect. Not having the problem while logged into another account would point to something specifically in your account. Still having the problem that way would point to something outside your account, possibly one of the global startup items.

Exact same thing is happening to me. Definitely nothing to do with a ham radio. It's always when my google chrome browser is open but no website that it would be the source from. It's happened twice now, (once per day) and it's starting to get annoying. There's lots of threads on how to fix it in Windows but obviously those don't apply to me. Any suggestions?

Googling Splashtop Streamer, I'd suspect that it might be the source of your problem since your Mac can be controlled remotely.....

Also, I try to keep my login items to actually necessary processes to keep the login process quick and lean and I don't see one in yours - the apps will still run, they just will not launch automatically at login.

If you can't safe boot and it is inconvenient to crerate another account, then like Splashtop Streamer, you are going to have to start eleiminating login items, launch agents and daemons, and startupitems one-by-one to see if any of these are responsible for the problem.

While you have a lot of additional stuff you can make some educated guesses of what to try first as babowa did with Splashtop Streamer.

From my point of view I would first eleminate ones I don't recognize on your lists or can't obviously eliminate with a google search, or I'm just too lazy to google in the first place. So here's my list:

login items

Echofon

~/Library/LaunchAgents

com.valvesoftware.steamclean.plist

com.facebook.videochat.Andy.plist

/Library/LaunchAgents:

com.teamviewer.teamviewer_desktop.plist

com.teamviewer.teamviewer.plist

net.culater.SIMBL.Agent.plist

org.macosforge.xquartz.startx.plist

/Library/LaunchDaemons

com.teamviewer.teamviewer_service.plist

org.macosforge.xquartz.privileged_startx.plist

/Library/StartupItems

360ControlDaemon (for xbox?)

tap (what is this?)

tun (what is this?)

I'm not saying any of these are the source of the problem only that I would pick these as the initial suspects.

That sounds like the kind of message that might be generated by cross-platform malware. Install the free Mac version of Sophos antivirus and run it and see if it can find the source of the problem.

http://www.sophos.com/en-us/products/free-tools/sophos-antivirus-for-mac-home-ed ition.aspx

I recommend staying away from all AV software. They are useless IMO.

On the other hand, if it is something to do with, say windows, you do have VirtualBox and Parallels. So I might revise my list, and the first candidates to remove,

~/Library/LaunchAgents

org.virtualbox.vboxwebsrv.plist

/Library/LaunchAgents

com.parallels.desktop.launch.plist

com.parallels.vm.prl_pcproxy.plist

/Library/LaunchDaemons

com.parallels.desktop.launchdaemon.plist

/Library/StartupItems

VirtualBox

FWIW, here's a related discussions on AV software:

Is virus protection needed for iMacs?