System Alert. Browser Blocked for security reasons

It was likely a random number, but worst case, suppose the "error code" was actually your encrypted password.

Because top-notch encryption is used, and passwords are NEVER stored "in the clear" it is consider too computationally expensive to crack that code. If they had a spare supercomputer sitting around and a few decades of compute-time available for free, I suppose they could do it, but likely not otherwise.

You gave away nothing.

You are welcome.

Any idea on how to make it go away? I did a forced quit of safari and rebooted my system. It has taken control of safari and I can't open any new tabs or close the offending one.

Ah....found the answer elsewhere. After the force quite, re-open safari while holding the shift key. All is back to normal.

That's exactly what was suggested here.

No, it was not suggested here. Force quit was suggested here, but that did not work for me. Another thread advised to force quit, then relaunch Safari while holding shift key. That worked.

You responded to my first post in this thread, so I assumed that you had seen the link in it, which includes that information. No worries, just clarifying.

Oh boy, I fell for this one... have I condemned myself to having to burn my computer? I called the number, talked to the guy, gave my name and email, let him have control of my computer to get the S/N number to check if my warranty is up to date (not)... was quoted $299 to fix the computer. At which point I got suspicious and ended the call.

I am currently running avaast, which so far has detected no virus, I assume it won't find anything after finding this thread.

Am I ok or did I totally blow it?

Change all passwords. If you do online banking or stored bank account info on your computer notify the bank of your breach of security. Notify your credit card companies.

You need to erase and format your hard drive then reinstall from a backup created prior to this breach. The scammers surely installed something on your computer.

Thanks Bob

Should I change the passwords from my computer before I reformat the hard disc or use a different one?

Hi,

The ***Apple Security Warning*** scam almost got me as well. Stupidly I did call the 800 number and I did give them my name and the error code. They told me to Force Quit all open programs. After this they told me it would cost "599 dollars to remove the virus form my computer". I said "Five dollars and Ninety-nine cents you mean?" Oh no, Five hundred and ninety nine dollars the "customer rep" responded. I said "Are you kidding me?". As soon as I started questioning the validity of this he hung up.

I quickly searched Google and found out it was a scam. It was suggested that I clear my browser history as well as going to Preferences in Safari and click on "Remove all Website Data" to be sure.

Do you feel I'm at any risk still after cutting off the conversation and following these steps?

Thank you for your help,

Bryan

Hi Bryan,

I had a long talk with my mac genius tech guy - he said in general these guys are only after the money - they get people to send them the bucks and pretend to clean your computer. We went through mine, and it was clean, although before I called avaast blocked 3 ...bad things. He recommended malwarebytes anti malware - a free download that'll scan your computer for anything possibly downloaded onto it.

So you're probably ok, but good to get it checked.

Hi Rachel,

Thank you for responding so quickly and putting my mind at rest! I will download the scanning software just to be sure.

Have a great holiday,

Bryan

Hi Bryan,

You're welcome, but please do not take my word for it! I am only passing on what my computer guy told me. If you read this thread, someone recommended wiping the HD and reformatting. So I think it's probably somewhere inbetween those 2 points of view. Don't just assume you're ok although you probably are...

Rachel

So what's the solution to this? I'm having the problem now but don't see the solution anywhere in this thread.