WARNING! Fake virus scan from WP placed ad!

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I was browsing WP when suddenly I got a popup box saying my computer was infected with viruses. I clicked cancel, but it didn't seem to care since it did a phony "virus scan" complete with fake window, and then told me I had 200 viruses and urged me to go to their website. I immediately did a forced reboot of my system. That seems to have gotten rid of it. Yes, I am using Firefox. The website it told me to visit was something like "antivirus9.com". If you get a popup box all of a sudden while browsing WP urging you to scan your computer for viruses, REBOOT IMMEDIATELY! I suspect that this site is installing something on people's computers. I will now have to do a REAL scan and see if it put anything on my system. Apparently it's getting in via an ad placed with the ad service WP uses.

Which browser are you using?

i didnt get that at home, using chrome, but this morning at work with IE it popped up and was a pain to close out, doesnt let you.

not even w ctrl+alt+del/task manager?

next time try Alt + F4


or FireFox + NoScript

I got that once, but not on Wrong Planet. For a second I actually believed it.

A) Just cuz you got it while browsing WP does not mean that it came from WP, you could very well have ad/malware on your computer that causes popups.

B) If you get a popup from a website that doesn't mean that they have installed something on your computer. It is pretty simple to create popups with javascript.

I have been browsing WP frequently for quite some time with IE (which is reportedly less secure than firefox) and have never had such a problem so I would not be so quick to assume that it is WP.

PS. Restarting your computer will not affect or remove malware that has been installed on your computer.

Last edited by mitharatowen on 22 Jul 2009, 11:12 am, edited 1 time in total.

That's popped up for me a few times over the past several months, at a number of sites. If clicking on the X doesn't shut it down (I don't click the radio buttons, because the label on the button doesn't necessarily have anything to do with its function), use Task Manager (in Windows) to close it. It'll generally be a different task than your FireFox app. If not, then shut down Firefox and do an immediate adware and/or malware scan.

The first thing I thought was some maleware/ad program so ran a few programs and it hasnt happened since (and yesterday was a slow day so I was on WP lurking all day =P).

However, this morning, WP has been redirected on me a few times to ad sites. While I was in another tab. I just hear the click and look at tabs and notice that WP is now to some other random site selling something. And it did that to me at home the other night, I just figured I accidentally clicked an ad as I was browsing through at the time. But this morning WP was just sitting idle, and I clicked the little back history tab and saw that WP had redirected me. Which can still be maleware related, downloading something new to try that, but my home PC is on pretty tight lockdown.

You get popups?

I don't understand. Doesn't Firefox block pop-ups?

Popup type behaviour, but not popup per say.

If someone click on a link and they expect something to happen firefox can't ban that, because it could be legitimate.

They have to use sniffing/bloodhound rules to check if it is something that would not be expected or is attempting to deceive.

Anything that pops up on load, or is linked to a timer function that is not linked to user event, will raise suspicions, as will opening multiple windows in quick succession, or trying to burry windows underneath others 'pop unders', so they are there when closing down.

Easy ways to tell if it coming from a client script:

Either the window should be visible in the taskbar, you can toggle between them (never click on the window itself), it should be a browser window. You can right click then close.

OR

Turn off styles View>page style>no style. if the 'window' goes away it is a faker.

If something goes to full screen press F11 or Esc

I have had this same issue twice within the past week, the second time being just a few minutes ago. Both times I was browsing WP, and have not seen it while browsing any other website.

I do run Firefox and so it'll keep getting messages saying that something is trying to open up another window or something (it won't actually open another window until I give my approval). The only way I could stop Firefox from freaking out and flashing was by opening the task manager and closing Firefox, then restarting the program again.

Hope this gets fixed soon! It's annoying.

I've encountered it, though I haven't noticed it as WP-specific, and I am on a Mac/Firefox system. My first guess is that there is an ad that made it through Google's review that is triggering the outside link to pop open, though I am not qualified to answer the question authoritatively. May want to observe if a there is an ad running on WP at the time that is consistent.


M.

Sometimes a popup can replicate the top bar that Windows XP has, so it looks like it is real. "clicking" on the "X" could very well be part of the popup. I just use task manager to close it, or identify it and close it by other means.

Gotta love flashblock and adblock

I had a bunch of pop-ups when opening the Random Pic thread today

I use adblock and noscript, kinda disappointed now :/