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What does this message mean?

K

kart

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 16, 2011
202
96
AU
Hi.

Whilst surfing on safari tonight, a pop up box came up saying

"From "http://apple.com-securealert.com"
VIRUS FOUND

The last website you visited has infected your Mac with a virus.

Press OK to begin the repair process"

Is this a legit Apple message? I force quit safari straight away and did not press OK


Anyone experienced this or is it a scam?

What should I do next?
Thanks
 
kart said:
Hi.

Whilst surfing on safari tonight, a pop up box came up saying

"From "http://apple.com-securealert.com"
VIRUS FOUND

The last website you visited has infected your Mac with a virus.

Press OK to begin the repair process"

Is this a legit Apple message? I force quit safari straight away and did not press OK


Anyone experienced this or is it a scam?

What should I do next?
Thanks
Click to expand...

Fake popup. Possibly due to a popup from a naughty webpage you were browsing, or maybe you've got a malicious browser extension/some PUPs on your Mac.

Try a quick scan through MalwareBytes for Mac. It will take 2 minutes to download and about that time to scan. It's a really fast process so it shouldn't be too much of an inconvenience. Remove anything it finds and you're good to go.

If MWB comes back clean, you don't need to worry (heck, even if it finds/removes infections you don't need to worry really). Maybe check that your OS is up-to-date, but don't concern yourself with anything beyond that.
 
keysofanxiety said:
Fake popup. Possibly due to a popup from a naughty webpage you were browsing, or maybe you've got a malicious browser extension/some PUPs on your Mac.

Try a quick scan through MalwareBytes for Mac. It will take 2 minutes to download and about that time to scan. It's a really fast process so it shouldn't be too much of an inconvenience. Remove anything it finds and you're good to go.

If MWB comes back clean, you don't need to worry (heck, even if it finds/removes infections you don't need to worry really). Maybe check that your OS is up-to-date, but don't concern yourself with anything beyond that.
Click to expand...


Thanks for the info!
Haha, wasn't a naughty website by any means, just popped up, never experienced it before..Will do the scan, thanks again!
 
A quick lesson on domain names...the last bit before the ".com" is the domain. So the domain in that URL is "com-securealert" with a .com suffix (dashes can be part of domain names). The "apple" part is a subdomain set up at com-securealert.com, which just about anyone could add to their domain (I could add apple.baughnconsulting.com in ten minutes). In this case, they've made it look good by setting up a domain name that starts with "com-" so that you actually see "Apple.com" in the URL. Tricky!
 
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