Do I have a virus?

[derek1984]

Today I was just browsing eBay on my Macbook Pro and all the sudden a window takes over my screen saying that my computer needs a virus scan. Then another window pops up and asks me if I want to perform the scan. I click cancel but it does nothing, I can't get out of it. So I then click okay and it starts showing that it is scanning files. The window looks like something from Windows Vista. I am then able to get out of the window that was supposedly scanning for a virus. I close safari and then get back into Safari and everything seems fine. I am on my Macbook for another hour and everything is fine. Do I somehow have some kind of virus?

 

[r.j.s]

No, those are popups for that company's scanning software.

 

[derek1984]

Thanks for the quick response. In my settings in Safari, I have pop ups blocked. Is this just a pop up that was able to sneak through the cracks?

 

[notjustjay]

Yes, the pop-up blockers try to be smart enough to detect when a pop up is unwanted or when you really do want to open a pop-up window. Sometimes it gets them wrong.

What you saw was an attempt by the maker of that virus software to trick you into using their product. As you noticed, the window that pops up looks a lot like Windows. It is clearly designed to fool an inexperienced computer user into thinking that Windows itself is generating the message. The message, of course, says "Oh noes!1! OMG viruses!" and asks you to download the product in question.

I had to explain to a friend of mine, after she moved from Windows to a MacBook, that those were not warning messages, but a picture of a (fake) warning message. I explained to her that any time she saw windows that looked like her old Windows, she needed to ignore them.

 

[Tumbleweed666]

I click cancel but it does nothing, I can't get out of it.

right click on Safari/Firefox on task bar, select Quit