Virus popup in Safari - Scam?

A scam. To get rid of it, choose Force Quit from the Apple menu, close Safari, and then launch it with the Shift key held down; if the message reappears, disconnect the computer from the Internet and close the tab the popup came from.

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Scam.

Quit Safari and relaunch it while holding down the shift key.

Your advice did indeed get rid of this pop-up. However, do I need to do anything else? Is there a chance that there is something malicious in my registry? There are lots of sites claiming to "clean" your PC and Mac, if you received this scam pop-up. They say if you got it, then the scammers already have something in your system and will continue to try and scam you and do harm to your computer in other ways.

Because of software upgrade conflicts, I am still running my laptop on OS X 10.7.5 Lion.

Thank you.

phyl6 wrote:

Your advice did indeed get rid of this pop-up. However, do I need to do anything else? Is there a chance that there is something malicious in my registry? There are lots of sites claiming to "clean" your PC and Mac, if you received this scam pop-up. They say if you got it, then the scammers already have something in your system and will continue to try and scam you and do harm to your computer in other ways.

Because of software upgrade conflicts, I am still running my laptop on OS X 10.7.5 Lion.

Thank you.

As long as you didn't click on anything in the pop-up, then no, you don't need to do anything else. I will add that continuing to use an unsupported operating system opens you up to a whole host of security issues, so I would seriously consider upgrading to El Capitan. It's no more or less prone to these browser hijackers than any other OS, simply because to be affected by them, you have to surf disreputable websites or websites that are packed with ads. If you have an ad blocker installed in your browser and have pop-ups disabled through Safari Preferences, you're fine.

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

The issue with the scam Safari lock-up was this past Thursday and I have had no problems. I did not click on any links.I only did a force shut-down.

Then this afternoon (Sunday) I got an email, using my name in the greeting, that said my account on my laptop was used to sign into Face Time. The time given was about the time I booted up to get some work done. I DID not use my Apple ID in any way. In fact, I have not used my Apple ID and Password on that particular machine in several weeks. The email said (edited):

Of course I did not access my account from that computer; I did a full scan on my PC (just to be very safe) and then used my PC instead of my laptop, and changed my password (which by the way had been very strong) to another strong password.

Can the scam lock-up of Safari be in any way related to this account breach? Or can this email be generated by something other than a full sign-into Face Time? I checked "recents" and my last use of Face Time was a year ago. Or did someone hack my account?

I tested the security of the change by trying to buy something in iTunes. It asked me to re-confirm my credit card information. I did not, however, just in case my account is still compromised. (I don't have anything I want to buy anyway.)

Thanking you in advance,

Phyllis

<Email Edited by Host>

If you haven't downloaded any software from the pop up ads, the odds scammers have installed anything on your computer is very low.