Pop-ups - Mozilla Firefox McAfee - "virus alert!" etc -Are these MALWARE?

[Joyce-Margaret]

Good morning.

For several weeks I have had nasty looking virus alerts on my pc purporting to be from Firefox. I am worried that they are malware, so I have not clicked on "close" or "dismiss" in case they are a link. I can ignore these messages, but I dare not log into my online banking.  Are they genuine?  How can I remove them?  (I am quite elderly).

[Client62 · Accepted solution]

The more unexpected the message, the more care we should take.

Malwarebytes has for many years been my goto tool for this type of issue.

https://www.malwarebytes.com/

In the same situation I download the free version and perform a scan of my PC or Laptop,
this often roots out nuisance software restoring confidence in the computer.

[Joyce-Margaret]

Hi Client62,

I'm sorry for not seeing your response earlier - I thought I'd requested email response. Not being tech savvy and being very cautious, I "googled" malwarebytes, and it all looks too scarily technical for me. I'll sit on it for a while.

My sincere thanks for your help,

[Buffer6]

This is Malware, I got that last week when signing into online shopping, my way out was to resize the screen and use task manager to close the browser. I had forgotten to enable my Hosts file so that's how it got in, from a stored cookie. One way to avoid this nuisance is to set browsers to clear all cookies when closing, it means logging into sites every time, but it's better than this malware messing you about.  Malwarebytes is handy to have installed as it refuses to go into dodgy sites, although sometimes it gets switched off, so a Hosts file is a must to have enabled as well. Some freeware has this ability to call in these malware messages as well, to try to get you to buy Antivirus software, I use Malwarebytes and Windows defender plus a MVPS Hosts file which I update from time to time that seems to work, although I have to stop the Hosts file sometimes when searching as it blocks too many sites, so long as I remember to enable it again after I complete the searches, all works OK

PS refuse online pop up surveys as this third party software can put unwanted stuff on your PC.

  

[newapollo]

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@Buffer6 wrote:

This is Malware, I got that last week when signing into online shopping, my way out was to resize the screen and use task manager to close the browser. I had forgotten to enable my Hosts file so that's how it got in, from a stored cookie. One way to avoid this nuisance is to set browsers to clear all cookies when closing, it means logging into sites every time, but it's better than this malware messing you about. 

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