Tech support scam pop-ups

When I turned my MBP on this morning what I believe to be a Tech support scam pop-up appeared. It asked me to "log in" which I didn't do and if that didn't work to unlock my computer call an 0800 number, which I also did not do.

What I did do was to quit Safari and turn the computer off and then back on after a few minutes, and all seems well.

Never seen this before today so not sure where it came from or, more important, how to get rid of it if it happens again.

Any "not too technical" help would be appreciated.

My computer is a 15" late 2013 MBP running OSX 10.12.3

I have noticed a more frequent appearance of the dreaded spinning ball recently!!

This is what I do for the browsers I use;

These are browser Extensions, or Add-Ons, and should be available for most browsers. In our house, the most used browsers are Safari, Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer, and Edge.
Install Ghostery, https://www.ghostery.com.
Install AdBlock Plus, https://adblockplus.org. Any AdBlocker should work, I have just used it a long time from my Windows user days and I still have 5 Windows PC's at home I maintain.
Also, I don't install Flash anymore, but if you have it, you may want to install a Flash Blocker.

Another thing is download, install, and run, Malwarebytes for Mac, https://www.malwarebytes.com/mac/.

Thanks for the info ferrarr. I do have, and regularly run malwarebytes but it doesn't find this thing. When I go to the next page of malwarebytes it says to remove these pop-ups navigate to "~/Library/Saved Application State/". "Inside that folder, find the folder named com.apple.Safari.savedState. Drag that to the trash."

I am trying to do this, navigate to the path shown but don't know how to?

cheddar-caveman said:

Thanks for the info ferrarr. I do have, and regularly run malwarebytes but it doesn't find this thing. When I go to the next page of malwarebytes it says to remove these pop-ups navigate to "~/Library/Saved Application State/". "Inside that folder, find the folder named com.apple.Safari.savedState. Drag that to the trash."

I am trying to do this, navigate to the path shown but don't know how to?

Click to expand...

To get to your Library folder you need to; open Finder, select Go in the Menu bar, press and hold Option, then your Library folder will show up because it is hidden on purpose by default. Select it, then you should be able to navigate from there.

Another thing to try, is to Quit Safari, then before opening Safari, press and hold Shift, then click to open Safari.

Many thanks farrarr - I'll try this and get back.

Um, I seem to be missing something here - I cannot see "GO" anywhere in the Finder menu bar? There's a search box, layout boxes on the left, a "sort by" option and a black wheel which opens a whole load of options but nowhere is there a "GO"??

Like this..?

Ahhhh, THAT menu bar! ;D

There's only one menu bar. It changes based on the active app. You were looking at what best can be called the "tool bar" of the app..

Many thanks for the help folks. Found and deleted said file so hopefully no more pop-ups!

Now then, what is the best, free cleanup software for a Mac? I've seen MacKeeper advertised on here but one has to pay for that (they don't tell you that up front!).

Don't bother with Mackeeper. OnyX is your answer.

I forgot about OnyX. I must re install, seems to have disappeared!
Many thanks folks.