How can I get rid of a Congratulations-you-won.com-yourprize.com pop up window on my iPad? It wants me to answer ok but I'm afraid it is a virus.

This is an information phishing scam. Is trying to get you to enter your information and does not leave any virus on your system.

HERE'S HOW TO GET OUT EASY:

TURN ON AIRPLANE MODE

CLOSE THE BROWSER APP BY DOUBLE CLICKING HOME BUTTON AND FLICKING BROWSER UP (This works for Safari or chrome )

RE-OPEN THE BROWSER APP

CLICK ON ITS FRIGGIN ANNOYING BUTTON. NO HARM WILL HAPPEN

YOU'LL GET A SCREEN WHERE IT WANTS YOU TO ANSWER A QUESTION OR GIVE INFO

BUT YOURE NOT CONNECTED TO ITS SITE, SO NO HARM!

YOU CAN NOW CLICK ON A NEW BROWSER WINDOW USING THE DOUBLED BOX ICON

OPEN ONE. It will be clean

Close the offending window

TURN OFF AIRPLANE MODE!

at this point, the whole scam disappears and you're clear of it!

Didn't mean to shout, but I wanted to be sure you got the solution

Hi Forensic Ornithologist. It may be staying in the FaceBook app, and just using the iOS webkit. If it is, then the FaceBook app may be managing the data. If it doesn't have a way of clearing its cache, you may have to uninstall the app to clear the data.

I think I may have found a solution. Try this.....

Settings --> Safari --> Advanced - scroll down to the bottom and turn off the "JavaScript" option - now I have everything off under "Advanced" (which is ironic in a disappointing way - having advanced features that are unusable).

Issue: Besides phone calls and texting, I mostly use my iPhone for finance and job researching - no ****, no FB nor other social media. When I went to my IPhone's 'Stocks' icon, as i having been doing most days for years without any problem, I check various stocks on "Finance_Yahoo_Com" and browse their articles to see how they (and the economy) are doing. Yesterday evening I started getting the so called "Congratulations Apple User...Amazon Gift Card...." notice (from "Free-Award_Com") with no way of getting out of it - except their deceptive "close" option that brings you to the Free A.... web site. This is after browsing articles from the usual standard financial sites (Accesswire, GlobalNewsWire, MarketRealist, etc.) that are listed on Finance_Yahoo.

I lacked the time to deal with it Sunday night and would try fixing it today. Today was the same thing, any finance article quickly brought that message so I was unable to read any article, also unable to search Safari, as the message kept appearing about 2 or 3 seconds after opening the page. I spent several hours trying different options until turning off the JavaScript option which stopped it for me, I can now browse (AND READ) any finance article nows and have done so for the past hour with no issue.

I went to my Mac and searched the web for solutions but the suggestions were of no help (clear your history / website data and reboot, etc.) but the problem still occurred.

What I tried:

- Went to Settings --> News and turned off most of the settings (notifications, cellular data, show previews, etc) "features" (I found this annoying anyways, so I am glad these are off).

- Went to Settings --> Safari and turned most of these off too (search engine suggestions, safari suggestions, etc.).

- I then selected "Clear history and website data' then powered down the iPhone and brought it back up. Went back to yahoo's stocks icon, selected the same articles and the same problem continued.

Solution: I gave it one last try, went to Settings --> Safari --> and scrolled all the way down to "Advanced" and turned off "JavaScript" (everything else was off), went back to yahoo's stocks icon, selected the same articles and the problem is gone! I could finally read the financial articles again!

I wrote this up and saved it as a draft in my email account - just in case a friend needs it - and thought I would share here as well.

Hope this fixes it for you!

I Know this is some time after the original post but … to others looking to solve the problem here's the beSt way:

1) Go to Settings and turn on Airplane Mode. ( turning off wi fi could still leave your cellphone data access open).

2) Return to Safari and click OK. Ignore prompts to turn off Airplane mode. You might see a cached page come up or simply a message that Safari could not connect to the web page. Close that page.

3) Clear your History and Website Data in Settings > Safari for added security

4) Return to Settings to turn off Airplane mode and continue.

This script is still out there (September 2016) and shows up on any site that uses ad feeds. It can show up on pretty much anywhere, it has nothing to do with **** sites.

srcdan wrote about going into Airplane mode.

What I did was to turn off the internet on my iPad (pretty much the same thing) and that fixed the problem.

Without internet, the browser tab just gave me an alert that the Internet was disconnected and I was able to close the tab.

My situation was that I had the "Congratulations" pop up and it asked me to press "OK". (I had opened a Yahoo website news story.)

- I did not press the OK in the pop up. But I could not get rid of the pop up because I could not close the tab or go to another tab.

I was using the Dolphin browser which does not have a 'clear history' in settings.

I double clicked the home button and removed Dolphin from memory several times. I did an iPad reset/turned it off using the power button.

It didn't help.

- Again, turning off the internet on my iPad allowed me to close the tab.

I've had a similar problem on both my iPhone and today on my iPad with something called "http://mobile-rewards.mobi/" while using Facebook claiming I'd won a prize. It looks as if legitimate by identifying me as an Earthlink customer. It gives me only the option to click OK and freezes everything else on the screen and I'm very wary of clicking on it and by googling the above address I can still get no helpful information. If I just quit Facebook, it's still there when I open it again. Today I simply fully powered down my iPad and restarted and the pop-up window disappeared. The first time it happened my iPhone though I carelessly OK but then realized it was probably not legit, and can't recall what I did and still wonder if it infected my phone somehow.

ppress the home button twice. you can then drag safari up and close it. then press the home button to return to the main screen. now you press an open safari and then hit the x to close the open window. you will have a few seconds to do this before the pop up screen opens again. but if you practise you get good at it.

Thank you I have just rebooted by pressing off button and the button at the bottom of the phone this has solved the problem. thank you all for your help

All this cache and data deleting didn't help at all, but here is what helped me for good:

SOLUTION: It's one of the APPS that you gave permission WITHIN facebook some (long) time ago, that is injecting these rogue popup ads.

I don't know which one exactly but when I went to:

Facebook Preferences > Account Preferences > Apps 
... there were dozens of old apps and even games that I couldn't remember ever to have used. Also old iOS games that asked for facebook permissions in the past. (some of these almost 10 years old) 
I deleted them almost all (especially games and apps that I have no clue what they do or did). I kept the ones that are definitely legit. 
I had no more popups on neither iPhone nor iPad in the last days. Finally!

This also explains why this also happens on brand new iOS (and also Android) devices and other people are not affected by these popups at all:

It's not in/on your device. It's within Facebook, a rogue app that is injecting the ads/popups.

Just had (15 minutes ago) this same thing on my wife's iPhone. She uses the WeatherBug site and this afternoon, this popup appeared. I tried Clear Website settings, but that didn't work. I then deleted the WeatherBug app and reloaded it from iCloud in the App Store. That worked (so far).

Happened to me on eBay.ie. I rarely use my iPad for browsing only Autodesk. No other apps installed. When it happened I instantly closed Safari and reset browser settings. Still happening/redirecting so eventually had to reset the iPad. Didn't trust entering my password on the device (in fact I kept getting pop ups asking for my iCloud password) so I wiped it via FMI

the same to my iPhone now while reading http://time.com/3491299/unforgettable-eisenstaedt-22-amazing-photos-by-a-master/ with safari. Solved with close, kill safari, reopen and close the tab.

How can we protect our devices and data? Use a different browser is not a chance with ios

Double tap your bottom home. Button and swipe up to close out the page.

Then go to your website as usual.

I have been getting this of recent as well. I thought it might have been an app I installed in the last few weeks even though they weren't anything suspicious so I deleted them, cleared cache and all that jazz. Still was getting it in particular on white pages. So, what I did was download the Norton Ad Blocker app (I chose Norton only because I know of Norton and trusted the name) and configured it in Safari. So far so good. It doesn't happen on my computer as I have all kinds of ad blockers and what not on the browser. Just for yuks, I just tried the site with Chrome on my ipad with no blocker and the Congratulations popped up. Now in incognito mode and no Congratulations. So either use a blocker (seems the pop up blocker in both Safari and in Chrome do not work to prevent this) or try incognito or private browsing modes.

I've come across this twice. I ABSOLUTELY did NOT want to "clear" my website info so I pressed on. In Safari, I closed the window and on the home screen press and hold the Safari icon for the menu and in my case, I chose show bookmarks, pick a site and it will navigate to that site.