Safari launches to a blank screen, with the title bar says: Web Surf Shield. My computer has been crashing and running slow the last couple of days.I've seen many sites talk about how to get rid of it on pc, but none for mac. How can I get rid of it, and fix my machine? Thanks!
iMac (24-inch Early 2008), Mac OS X (10.5.8)
EDITED: TRY THIS FIRST and disregard the instructions below. Go to Safari>Preferences>Extensions and for the time being uninstall any extension or extensions you may recently have added. Go to your home folder Library>Safari>Extensions and move any of those to the Trash.
In addition, go to http://www.thesafemac.com/arg-identification/ for instructions. Web Surf Shield isn't specifically listed, but this gives some other places to look for removal.
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Not certain, as this may be something new, but see if this will do it. First disconnect from the Internet, either by removing the Ethernet cable from the computer or turnng off Airport.
Go to Preferences>Security and uncheck Enable JavaScript. If that unlocks Safari, then from the Menubar>Safari>Empty Cache and then Reset Safari, with the following checked.
Once this is done, re-enable JavaScript and reconnect to the Internet.
Do you happen to remember what site you visited when this happened, or did you open some attachment in an email?
Message was edited by: WZZZ
If this is malware of any kind, it's brand new to me. It's more likely to be some adware I'm not familiar with. If you could, post a list of the extensions in the Extensions pane of Safari's preferences.
Also, try quitting Safari (don't just close the window, choose Safari -> Quit Safari), then holding down the shift key while re-opening it. If the Web Surf Shield window no longer appears, and doesn't come back after quitting and restarting Safari again, then Safari was just remembering the pages that were open when you quit and re-loading them when it started back up again.
Finally, this could be a problem with your network, rather than with your computer. Try the tests found here:
Eliminating browser redirects and advertisements
Post your results of those tests here (ie, the answers to the three questions that page asks you).
Web Surf Shield - virus, please help!
