I am receiving popup ads stating my iMac may have a serious virus. I responded to one connection and when I asked what assurance I had that they were truly from apple, they disconnected. That site was www.go3q.com and said Colorado users were having this problem
iMac (21.5-inch Mid 2011), OS X El Capitan (10.11.3)
Use Malwarebytes Anti-Malware: http://www.adwaremedic.com/index.php
You can also remove the adware manually using the steps provided by Apple: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203987
After that, make sure your default search engine is set to the one you always use. To do so, Open Safari - Preferences - Search.
Go to Safari menu (At the very top right side of your screen next to Apple icon), choose "Quit Safari"
press "Shift" button and while holding this button on your keyboard single click on the Safari icon on your Dock.
Open Safari - Preferences - Privacy - Remove All Website Data.
Also, I believe it would be a good idea to install AdBlock.
For future reference, no website can determine any status of your computer via a browser
other than browser name and version, unless you download and install any app from such a
sight or otherwise grant control of your computer.
If you have allowed such access and some sort of monetary exchange was involved, immediately
notify your financial institutions, change all internet passwords everywhere (perhaps even user names
if possible), and save all important data from computer and completely reinstall everything.
These and anything like it are all scams. You don't, and never had any malware on your Mac. The correct action is the middle part of D.Choen's post. Force Quit Safari and then relaunch it with the Shift held down. This tells Safari not to reload the sites from the previous session.
Using ad blocking software is helpful when you know there is no adware on your Mac. It is just the opposite of useful when there is since all it succeeds in doing then is preventing the adware from showing most of the ads it generates on your screen. It does nothing to stop the adware from using up tons of RAM and your Internet bandwidth as it continues to constantly retrieve ads in the background.
In other words, fix the problem, not the symptom.
Don't use any kind of "anti-virus" or "anti-malware" product on a Mac. There is never a need for it, and relying on it for protection makes you more vulnerable to attack, not less.
Your problem is most likely not caused by malware. It's a Web scam that only affects the browser, and only temporarily. There are several ways to recover.
1. The easiest thing to do is to force quit the browser. Relaunch it by holding down the shift key and clicking its icon in the Dock, the LaunchPad, or the Applications folder.
You will lose the state of other open tabs and windows. Either Step 2 or Step 3 may enable you to keep that state information. If those steps don't work, fall back to Step 1.
2. 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 may close. If that doesn't happen, 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.
After closing the malicious page, select from the menu bar
Safari ▹ Preferences... ▹ Privacy ▹ Remove All Website Data
to get rid of any cookies or other data left by the server. Open the Downloads folder and delete anything you don't recognize.
Anyone having suspicious popup ads about Apple virus?
