Here is my story:
It was a typical December morning. As I was having my morning coffee, I was online looking for new shiny airplane toys (while my first passion is building the best IT Support company in the world [hyperlink], my second passion is flying). When typing the URL for Sporty’s Airplane supplies in my browser, I accidentally typed “sporties.com” instead of sportys.com.
After I hit enter, the browser rerouted to this screen:
The website I landed on looked like an official Microsoft website:
And it looked like Microsoft was pointing out a problem with my machine:
The problem is Microsoft doesn’t do this sort of thing! Microsoft’s website doesn’t spit out popups saying that your machine is infected. It likely wouldn’t use an unassigned toll free number (855) to receive customer calls. And I’ve never seen a computer ID of 23981—I am a Microsoft vendor, and I’ve never seen a number like this before.
What’s worse, is every time I closed a pop-up, another appeared in its place—with the same message. I had to go to Windows Task Manager and shut down my Chrome browser to stop all the popups.
The take home message: if you mistype a URL, it’s never the end of the world. When you land on a site that tries to convince you that your computer has a virus or is in some sort of trouble—ignore the messages. Never call the number. If you can’t get pop-ups to close or if others keep popping up, take these simple steps to rid yourself of that terrible website.
For a Windows computer:
Click CTRL ALT DEL (hold these 3 keys down at the same time). This will pop up a blue screen.
Click on the Task Manager button.
A list of applications (Apps) will be shown. Select the browser you were using (make sure it is highlighted).
Click End Task.
The unfortunate thing: you may lose the other tabs or windows you’ve been working on. But these other sites should be in your history still when you restart your browser. You shouldn’t restore your previous session (because you may end up with the same pop-up problem as before). Go to History and click on the sites you want restored (if you need any).
The age of attacks and hacking is serious. And phishing scams are getting MUCH more convincing! If you have any questions about phishing attacks, please call our office.
