Apple Virus
There is a lot of stuff around about Safari pop-up scams. Unfortunately, I only found out about this after hitting an "Apple Virus Alert" pop-up on my iMac, which froze me out of Safari. Foolishly, I rang the contact number displayed for the "Technical Department" of an outfit calling itself "Apple Protect" - +44 151 528 8463 (which looks like a telephone number for the Liverpool area in the UK but in fact takes you to India). (You can pull them up on a Google search on "Apple Virus Alert".) After a lot of rigmarole, I ended up sending them some money for support protection. They rang me back later to check on things. By then, I had discovered about these scams and challenged them. They protested they were genuine but couldn't provide any proper credentials of Apple approval. Next day, my money mysteriously reappeared in my bank account via a transaction outfit called Transferwise. So I am puzzled about what their game really is, as there is no other sign of attempted fraud or malware (I have run my standard anti-virus software through the Mac and found nothing). Has anyone else heard of this outfit and got any take on what might be behind all this ? Are they just scammers who either aren't very slick or maybe have a conscience ?!
iMac (27-inch Mid 2011), OS X Yosemite (10.10.3)
