Escape the Pop-Up Ad Trap - Won't Allow User to Close Pop Up Alert, Close or Change Tabs, Greys All Menu Options, Demands You Call 800# to Fix
Just a friendly piece of information I wanted to pass along this semi-escape method since I've been twice caught by this new nefarious little pop-up scam.
So the basic format is as such:
You go on a website and suddenly are hit with one of these irksome pop-up ads that invariably has copy and language reading something to the effect of: "Malware has been detected and to call an #800 number for further instructions."
We experienced web users ignore these things and simply click the "close" button because we know it's junk, but surprisingly with this variant, there is no close button ... you can only hit "OK". But when you click OK, it immediately refreshes the page and brings you back to the pop-up add.
So you think, "clever trick, guys." .... and believe if you shut off your WIFI the page cannot reload. Nope. The d*mn thing reloads again.
Someone clearly has found an exploit in Safari which will literally highjack your browser and prevent you from doing anything outside of refreshing the same tab or force quitting Safari via Task Manager. All options in the menu bar are greyed out and inaccessible.
The nefarious part is that unlike, say, Firefox where you can reopen your browser in a "Safe Mode" and individually check off which tabs you want to reopen upon start-up, Safari offers no such option. All the tabs reopen when you restart Safari, and as you can imagine the crooked trap tab as well, putting you right back in the same conundrum.
The only solution I have found is to hold down the CMD + W key (this is the manual keyboard short-cut to close a tab), and then quickly and repeatedly hit the "OK" button on the nonsense pop-up add. Eventually your Mac will be able to beat the refreshing pop-up ad to the punch so to speak and will shut down the tab.
Note: You will probably end up shutting down several adjoining tabs as well but that's a minor inconvenience compared to a locked browser. Call it collateral damage.
Neither Ad Block, Click to Plug-in, or Click to Flash prevent this from happening either.
It seems the only way to completely eliminate this from happening is to go into Safari Preferences > Security and disable [enable Java Script], but since most all websites use Java or have Java components, your experience on the net will be severely compromised.
MacBook Pro, OS X Yosemite (10.10)
