What do I do when I get the alert in safari " System Detected Security Error, Due to Suspicious Activity Found On Your Computer. Contact Certified Live Technicians at 1-888-670-5630 (Toll Free)"?

FYI

From the U.S. Federal Trade Commission:

http://www.consumer.ftc.gov/blog/court-tells-tech-support-scammers-pay

How do you do this on an iPad air?

How do I do this on an iPad air?

Do I need to be concerned if I called the number and they had remote access, but I said no to the buying whatever? Can they still remote access my desktop, and is there anything I can/need to do to re-secure it? Thank you!

dismith2007 wrote:

Do I need to be concerned if I called the number and they had remote access

Yes. At that point anything could have happened. Disconnect your computer from the Internet and restore the entire hard drive from backup dated before the call.

Goodness... how do I do that? I know how to take it off the network, but restoring?

dismith2007 wrote:

restoring?

That would depend somewhat on what version of OS X you are using, but in general you would need to completely erase your boot drive from your install disk or Recovery HD with Disk Utility and then use whatever backup software you have to copy a backup you made prior to the phone call back, to your boot drive. You do have a backup, right?

This is a school machine, so no. Question: If I have no sensitive info saved to the hard disk- nothing with financials or identification anything, and I've made sure that in security remote access is off so they can't get back in, am I all right? Even if they copied my hard disk there is nothing to get but lesson plans. The only way I would have a problem is if they somehow had access to a keystroke log and fuddled through until they found me logging into Amazon or something. But no financially related passwords are autosaved on my machine...

If it's really not safe then my only option is to take it to the school tech dept. and have them completely reformat, it sounds like.

They could have installed keylogger software that is broadcasting everything you type and passing it on right now.

Cripes. Is there a way to check specifically for that?

dismith2007 wrote:

Is there a way to check specifically for that?

Your Tech Dept might be able to.

Thank you! This helped me a lot.

I think it has to do with Adobe Flash. I was attempting to download it (against my better judgement) it when this happened. Adobe is stupid.

slmcanal wrote:

I think it has to do with Adobe Flash. I was attempting to download it (against my better judgement) it when this happened. Adobe is stupid.

I've never had any issues updating Adobe Flash — if you're downloading it from Adobe's website, there will be no such browser hijacker scams.