Safari virus notice freezes browser

Question

Level 1

4 points

Safari virus notice freezes browser

When I open Safari or click on a link in my email on my Mac, the browser plays a loud siren and a pop-up reads "http://app.macoscleaner.com VIRUS FOUND The last website you visited has infected your Mac with a virus. Press OK to begin the repair process." I have NOT pressed OK because I do not want to download anything or proceed in a way that might unleash Malware. Also, the browser is frozen. I cannot move to another tab or proceed to a website at all.

If I need to install an antivirus to take care of this, what should I do? which one?

I have used Safari on Mac laptops since it was introduced. Never had this happen. My MacBook Pro 15" (early 2011) is running Yosemite 10.10.3.

Thank you for your help.

Lynne Culp

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.2), 2.2 GHz Intel Core i7

Posted on Jun 12, 2015 2:35 PM

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Answer 1

stedman1

Level 10

265,324 points

Jun 12, 2015 2:41 PM in response to lculp

Force quit Safari, then restart Safari while holding the shift key.

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Answer 2

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,739 points

Jun 12, 2015 4:08 PM in response to lculp

It's not a virus. It's a Web scam that only affects your browser, and only temporarily. There are several ways to recover.

1. Some of those scam pages can be dismissed very easily. Press the key combination command-W to close the tab or window. A huge box will pop up. Press the return key and both the box and the page will close. If that doesn't happen, continue.

2. Press and hold command-W. You may hear repeating alert sounds. While holding the keys, click the OK button in the popup. A different popup may appear, which you can cancel out of as usual.

3. From the Safari menu bar, select

Safari ▹ Preferences... ▹ Security

and uncheck the box marked Enable JavaScript. Leave the preferences dialog open.

Close the malicious window or tab.

Re-enable JavaScript and close the preferences dialog.

4. If the Preferences menu item is grayed out, quit Safari. Force quit if necessary. Relaunch it by holding down the shift key and clicking its icon in the Dock. None of the windows and tabs will reopen.

After closing the malicious page, from the menu bar, select

Safari ▹ Preferences... ▹ Privacy ▹ Remove All Website Data

to get rid of any cookies or other data left by the server. Open your Downloads folder and delete anything you don't recognize.

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Answer 3

lculp Author

Level 1

4 points

Jun 13, 2015 12:30 PM in response to Linc Davis

Thank you so much, Linc. Your process worked perfectly. Command-W did not close the window initially, but holding it down closed all my tabs and took me back to my home page where I completed the process you wrote. All appears to be fine and Safari is no longer frozen. Nothing in the downloads folder so I guess I'm good to go. Very grateful.

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