Strange Message While Surfing Internet

What browser?

I hear you. I had gotten that frigging "FBI virus" once and had to get another virus removal tool. Norton just wasn't working so great. I got "F-Secure" and it has served its purpose pretty darn good. I'll never use Norton again. It seemed with "Norton" every time I did an upgrade it wanted me to re-install it again and when I did the confirmation number or whatever its called would not work unless you paid for it again. Sort of like CW, lol.

You did good. But you should be more careful about the sites you're visiting. When I see something like that I immediately reboot.

SPAM....plus real good way to get virus.

Click on message and wham.....computer screen get blue/or black with message. You MUST pay...your computer is being held Hostage.


NEVER click!!!!

Bitdefender, Malwarebytes Anti-Expoit, SUPERantispyware----all free (upgrade versions available but free versions work)

Annoyware.

Often snuck in with installer packages on some other hunk of software you installed. Go to control panel and see if you see a program or two you don't recognize. if so, uninstall it.

A lot of annoyware uninstalls OK, you don't need to do anything drastic.

Malware Bytes does an excellent job of keeping this junk off your system.

Old-Biscuit wrote:
SPAM....plus real good way to get virus.

Click on message and wham.....computer screen get blue/or black with message. You MUST pay...your computer is being held Hostage.


NEVER click!!!!

Bitdefender, Malwarebytes Anti-Expoit, SUPERantispyware----all free (upgrade versions available but free versions work)

OP was browsing the internet, spam is what goes into your email box.

What the OP was a victim of is called a drive by malware attack.

You CAN get malware on ANY compromised website and or any site with "3rd party" advertisements which use JavaScripts (not the same as "Java"). JavaScripts can easily bypass ALL antivirus/anti-malware software therefore you have very little control once the malware gets started.

Think of JavaScripts as very tiny programs that have complete and full administrator access rights to your PC.

A compromised website or advertisement has a JavaScript which is altered to deliver malware payload to your PC silently. Then the malware disables your antivirus and then installs the main payload which is a virus..

I learned that the hard way when I got hit from visiting a website I had visited plenty of times and it had those inline ads which if you scrolled your mouse over the blue text with an underline a 3rd party ad would pop up..

I quit using IE and installed FireFox along with AdBlockPlus which gets rid of the inline ads and as a extra precaution I also use NoScript which BLOCKS ALL JavaScripts from running. NoScript can be a pain because it will disable legit JavaScripts that some websites require. For those you can just enable ONLY the JavaScripts needed to restore the website functions.

OP did nothing wrong, just a fact of life that if you must live in this world now days you will be taking a few risks on the Internet that can't be helped. You can mitigate some of the risks by locking down and taking control of your browser with things like NoScript and AdBlockPlus..

Yep, had exactly as discussed in previous post happen on my kindle. Moused over some ad, redirected to some fake FBI ransomeware page. Had to kill the wireless and reset the browser to get the browser off that page.

I gave up on Norton for the pc a while back, using Webroot now. Happy with that so far.

Yep just shut down and reboot and its gone..

2oldman wrote:
What browser?

I think I was using the new Edge browser at the time, but I do alternate between that browser and Chrome, so I ant say for sure. I was a little disappointed that Bitdefender didn't catch it in the first place.

Gdetrailer wrote:
Think of JavaScripts as very tiny programs that have complete and full administrator access rights to your PC.

This is 100% incorrect. Javascript runs in the context of the browser and browsers have a lot of security surrounding their execution. While it's true that sometimes holes can be found in this protection, the way you tell it there's no protection at all.

And to avoid any program from having "full admistrative access rights to your PC" the best advice is to not use an administrative account for your day to day activities, especially if it involves the web.