Is mac-securities.com phone 1-844-743-5**6 a legitimate apple technical support number?

That is not an apple phone number do not call it.

It's a scam. Force quit Safari. Hold down the Shift key and relaunch it.

You're welcome. 🙂

I got the same pop-up as carsoni, with the same number. I even got an audio message saying that malicious adware had most likely been installed on my computer. This was in Safari. Then, my sister who had gone to the page that broght this up, went and tried to open the same page in Firefox 😠.

Anyhow, should I be concerned abot their being some sort of virus on my computer now???

Thanks ahead of time!!

No. Nothing was downloaded to, or installed on your Mac. It's nothing more than a JavaScript loop to try and keep you stuck on the web page the popup is on.

Hi, I have the same problem. I can quit Safari, but because I can't access to the preferences, I can't uncheck «open windows of the last session», so each time I restart it, the pop up appears again. I could try to delete the virus manually if someone can tell me where to look in my Mac. Thanks in advance. And please excuse my English. (I'm French speaker.)

Try Kurt's initial suggestion of holding the shift key while re-opening Safari. If that doesn't work, there are some other options here:

Tech support scam pop-ups

There is no actual virus involved.

(Fair disclosure: I may receive compensation from links to my sites, TheSafeMac.com and AdwareMedic.com.)

I'm not familiar with forums. I can't see here his message but I got a message by email :

And the solution is very simple. It is on this site: http://www.thesafemac.com/tech-support-scam-pop-ups/

I quit and hold Shift key while opening Safari and it worked !

Thanks and good luck to everyone!

Safari

Quit Safari. If you are unable to do that, press command-option-esc to display the Force Quit Applications window. In that window, select Safari and click the Force Quit button.

To prevent the malicious page from reloading automatically, and thus the pop-up from reappearing, hold down the shift key while launching Safari.

If that doesn’t work, quit Safari again, then navigate to the following folder:

~/Library/Saved Application State/

(If you are not sure how to find this folder, see Locating files from paths.)

Inside that folder, find the folder named com.apple.Safari.savedState. Drag that to the trash.

Next, go to the following folder:

To fully explain how these popups work on the Mac:

1) You hit a bad web site and the scary sounding popup appears.

2) You click OK or whatever button is there to try and dismiss it. The popup seems to be unresponsive, or comes back after a very brief time off the screen.

3) This happens because of a JavaScript action they're using. JavaScript (no relation at all to Java) is used extensively on the web. Much of what we take for granted wouldn't work if you turned it off in a web browser's preferences. Like the buttons across the top of this page. Anything on a page that changes when you move your mouse over or across it is JavaScript in action. In this case, the mouseover command.

4) What these scammers use is another JavaScript action to "do on exit". In the case of these popups, you really are closing it when you click the button, but the final HTML command of the popup is a JavaScript "do on exit". And the "what to do" is to display the same popup.

5) Safari, and pretty much all web browsers force you to attend to the button on a popup before it will let you do anything else. Which is why you can't get to the preferences or other tabs. So there you are, stuck in a loop of closing the popup, only to have it immediately display again. The crooks are using a simple built-in function of all web browsers to make your web browser appear to be stuck. No malware of any kind is necessary to accomplish this. Just a browser with JavaScript enabled. And it pretty much has to be on in order to use virtually any web site.

Being the idiot who actually did call the number....they can only infiltrate your computer if you let them. Which in my absolute panic I did. However, they only want money and its basically a one way system so without you letting them in nothing happened. Real tech support told me its not very sophisticated so unless you allow them there's nothing on your computer. Either way I didn't even think something like that could come through a mac-I should have known it was a scam. Mine too came with audio-I dont know why I thought that was more credible.

Awesome! Thanks Kurt and Thomas! I am now slightly less ignorant about these things because of you!

thanks kurt lang, it work great spam is gone :-)

I will add that hitting one of these infected sites in IOS is particularly infuriating. If you dismiss Safari, and it'll restore the app's state - including the popup - when you try to go back in.

One workabout is to turn off WiFi and disable Cellular for Safari. [Settings > Celluar > Safari ] When Safari tries to restore the infected page, it'll deliver the typical "cannot connect to website" error instead of the popup, and then you can kill the tab.

Turn wi-fi and Cellular for safari back on and use Safari normally.

That's a nice way to do it. The other with any iPad or iPhone is to close Safari (double tab the Home button and drag it up and off the screen). Then go into Settings > Safari, and clear all website data. When you relaunch Safari, it will open up to a blank page, or will default to Apple's site. Can't remember which.

The nice thing about your method is that you don't clear out all of your cookies. Which then means you have to re-enter what were previously remembered user names and passwords for sites you commonly visit.