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HELP! I have a pop up on my safari telling me it crashed

My Safari browser is being held captive by a pop up that tells me the "due to a 3rd party application my operating system has crashed and to call 1-866-5****** for immediate help.


When I tried calling, suspiciously I got a foreigner I could barely understand who said he was in India. He said he would have to have me do diagnostics etc etc before he could help. I said I would do som eother checking as it didn't sound legit at all.


Anyone know about this?


I ran a virus scan & all is well. I am on Firebox browser now as I remembered a day later I could possible get in & bypass Safari



Kristi

<Edited by Host>

MacBook, watchOS 1.0.1, air

Posted on Aug 30, 2015 8:03 PM

Reply
4 replies

Dec 7, 2015 3:18 AM in response to zuzupetals2u

Read Phony "tech support" / "ransomware" popups and web pages for a description of, and the solution to, this common scam.


The only threat would be to act upon whatever it says, because it is all false. That includes downloading or installing anything in response to such a scam, regardless of the source. Since it appears that you did that, more information is required. What product did you use to perform a virus scan?

Dec 7, 2015 4:47 AM in response to zuzupetals2u

  • It was a scam. Any pop-up window that hijacks your browser is a scam, no matter what it's telling you.
  • You say you ran a virus scan and it found nothing, but that virus scan wasn't going to find anything anyway, as they're made to look for Windows viruses/Trojans, and you're not on a Windows machine. You should uninstall whatever anti-virus program you had previously installed. There is no virus currently in the wild that can do any damage to OS X.
  • Go to http://www.etresoft.com/etrecheck — download and run EtreCheck, copying the status report to paste here. It's possible the pop-ups were spawned either by shady websites you were visiting or adware/malware on your hard drive. If there is any, we'll see it in your report and advise you on how to deal with it.

HELP! I have a pop up on my safari telling me it crashed

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