Prevent Phishing Scam Pop up on MBP?

The Apple Store will probably wipe your mothers computer clean to factory level, then reinstall the os. Does your mother have a backup?

The popup is a scam. Advise your mother never to respond or click on popups.

Safari 6/7 (Mavericks): Block pop-ups and unnecessary content

Stop pop-up ads and adware in Safari - Apple Support

http://www.thesafemac.com/tech-support-scam-pop-ups/

Phony "tech support" / "ransomware" popups and web pages

ProfessorP wrote:

I'm pretty sure that she most likely doesn't have a back up, unfortunately.

The next time you visit your mother, purchase for her an external drive and set it up for her. This way, she or you will have no worries & piece of mind. 🙂

Some Apple Stores will back up for you if you request it. They may or may not charge. Depends on the store.

As you already suspect this is a SCAM. But the first stage just captures your Browser with non-stop JavaScript messages, and does not infect or damage the computer at all.

Quit Safari or power off and you are free. Hold Shift as you re-launch Safari and the devilish page (or ad) will not be re-loaded.

In general these guys just want your money. If they can get your credit card info as well, so much the better. They may try to snoop around and find any other info like any Bank account numbers or your Social Security number to do an identity theft.

They may not care about anything else, so they may not have left anything behind.

is the genius bar people at Apple going to be able to help her at all?

¿Does she have a Trusted Backup?

-- If yes, they will completely ERASE the drive and install Mac OS X from scratch, and send here home to Restore her files (unless she brings in her Backup drive as well, in which case they might get that Restore started for her.)

-- If no, they will not know what to do, so they will ask her whether she wants to wave bye-bye to every file, every photo, and every saved email she ever had, as well as all her contacts. Unless she says OK, they can do nothing, so she needs to know the answer to that question ahead.

----You can still back up just her files, or everything, as long as they don't erase the drive FIRST. After Backing up, you (or she) can:

1) erase the drive and

2) Install Mac OS X from scratch and

3) restore just her files.

User files are in un-privileged directories under /Users, so restoring just User files, even if copied from a compromised drive, has low risk or dropping anything dangerous in System files or /Applications.

--------

PS> she can also buy an external drive from them, and get them to show her how to do a Backup. Then do the 3-step process I described above. They almost always have Backup drives for sale in the store. It will not be the absolute cheapest drive available, but it will be a good one and they will help her make sure the process works.

NB> The genius Bar process has evolved. You DO get attention until your problem resolves, but it may not be exclusive attention. The genius may work with another customer at the same time your Backup, (or Restore or Initialize) is running, and come back to you a little later.