is this a bug or what?

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hiya, my son was searching through some stuff for his myspace page not sure on which site he was visiting but up popped this report saying he had used 645 usage of pornagraphic images and that it can upset work, families, relationship etc. and that it will be held on the computers hard drive. it then went on to ask if he would like to run a driver clean it said ok or cancel download is this a bug? (i hope so :( ) i use a pc myself and am a little unfamilier with what happening on his mac can anyone help please

many thanks david
 
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hiya, my son was searching through some stuff for his myspace page not sure on which site he was visiting but up popped this report saying he had used 645 usage of pornagraphic images and that it can upset work, families, relationship etc. and that it will be held on the computers hard drive. it then went on to ask if he would like to run a driver clean it said ok or cancel download is this a bug? (i hope so :( ) i use a pc myself and am a little unfamilier with what happening on his mac can anyone help please

many thanks david

I think this post needs to be used as an example of Irony... why? Because this kind of thing usually happens on Windows machines, not Macs.

ANYWAY... sounds like a sophisticated pop-up to me - I assume you're using Internet Explorer or perhaps Netscape on Mac OS 10.0?

He can either ignore the error, or you can download a Browser that won't bother you with that kind of thing - such as Firefox. I would urge you to upgrade the OS X as well, because OS X 10.0 was not that robust...
 
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Sounds like just another Windows virus/spyware site trying to plant its handiwork. Ignore it — your Mac is immune.

As Zoolook said, you should upgrade your system from 10.0. Stable and bug-free it ain't.
 
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hi thanks for the quick reply, i'm not sure what type of os x mac he has, he already uses firefox as his internet explorer, so does this mean he has been visiting these pages?

again many thanks david
 
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hi thanks for the quick reply, i'm not sure what type of os x mac he has, he already uses firefox as his internet explorer, so does this mean he has been visiting these pages?

again many thanks david


Then he should ensure pop-ups are disabled in the Firefox Preferences.

I can't comment on what your son may or may not look at, however there is no way an external website or even the OS can determine what kind of images are stored on the HDD. If you think about it, the term 'pornographic image' is subjective anyway.
 
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Doesn't mean anything. 'Tis a ruse to get people who have frequented sites with lesser clad women to install whatever spyware/adware they infect people's machines with for a living. In other words, you can safely ignore it, and it doesn't mean that your son surfs for porn
 
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ok thanks do you think i should download and run the file just incase he has?
 
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It won't run because it's written for Windows.

What's the URL to this marvellous piece of software that can read porn pictures?
 
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ok thanks do you think i should download and run the file just incase he has?

No. It's almost certainly a scam.

If your son is older than about 14, it's almost inevitable he's looked at stuff that might make his granny blush... but you should maybe just have a 'man to man' chat with him and suggest he doesn't save pictures, if this worries you. I really wouldn't think about it too much, you'll be fighting a losing battle forever. You should know that surfing dodgy sites on a Mac is a lot safer than doing it under windows, if that is any comfort.
 
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i'm not sure have looked to see if it in the history but is no longer there can i get that information back?
the thing that was shown had a firefox loggo on it though so i think it may have come through firefox itself, is this possible?
 
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thanks again thats a great help, ii have already spokoe to him as he was concerned about this message that pooped up, he said it said something about quicktime
 
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i'm not sure have looked to see if it in the history but is no longer there can i get that information back?
the thing that was shown had a firefox loggo on it though so i think it may have come through firefox itself, is this possible?

Not unless there is some anti-porn extension I have not heard of... and if that is the case, I doubt he'd have installed it himself.

There is no realistic way of getting this info back.
 
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A while ago there was a phony religious site that ran a scam like that, so they aren't all porn sites. The scam relies on a person having a guilty conscience, so it could be on any site. The scammers restricting it to porn sites only would cut the number of computers it could turn into zombies.
 
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how can i check what cache / web pages he has visited if he has deleted his history? sorry his mother is doing her fruit %(
 
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If the history is cleared, I don't think you can. Even it it wasn't cleared, you might not be able to track it down, because it could have been a redirect popup from another site, probably under the control of outfits in China or Russia. A zillion Windows computers around the world are turned into zombie servers by these guys.
 

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it's just pop up bait, an advert. ignore it.

myspace is notorious for having horrible ads, that's all this was.

when the one comes up that says his, ehem, manhood is too small and to click to make it bigger, ignore that one too.
 
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daivd@@ said:
how can i check what cache / web pages he has visited if he has deleted his history?

If you want to check the History, click "History" (*gasp!*) in the Menu Bar at the top
and click "Show in Sidebar" (or "History" in older versions of Firefox) at the bottom of the menu.

As for the Cache, well, you don't really "check the Cache."
The Cache is just where webpages and their content is temporarily stored on your computer,
so that if you load that page again,
it could just load the content from the Cache, instead of re-downloading it again.
(In Windows, it is called "Temporary Internet Files.")



daivd@@ said:
thanks again thats a great help, i have already spoken to him as he was concerned about this message that pooped up, he said it said something about quicktime

That's probably when you load a video in Firefox.
QuickTime is what plays the video inside Firefox.
I never had Firefox display anything about QuickTime though,
other than seeing the blue QuickTime logo right before the video loads.




About the ads...

You have to learn to distinguish ads from real alerts.

Usually, this is pretty easy.

Ads that mimic the appearance of a program or alert are usually required to be explicitly identified as an ad;
"ADVERTISEMENT" would usually be written at the top or the bottom, though it might be in small font.

Also, use common sense.

In Mac OS X,
the name of the program that you are currently "focused on" (the one you're using)
will always be displayed on the TOP LEFT corner.
If that window appeared, you click on the title bar of the window to focus on it.
If you see "Firefox" on the top right corner, then you know that it is a Firefox window.
Now, how would Firefox possibly know anything about pictures on your hard drive?
If it had the capability to scan the contents of your hard drive WITHOUT your permission and even IDENTIFY what kind of pictures you have (which is amazing in itself), this would be a massive privacy issue, and certainly, nobody would use Firefox.

Finally, do you even have some sort of program that can actually do this?
A program that scans your hard drive for pornographic pictures... I don't think such a program even exists.
So this one is obviously fake.

Another common ad that I've seen is, "Your computer could have viruses! Click here to scan!"
Now, anti-virus programs DO exist,
but do you have any installed?
If not, then obviously, once again, it's fake.

A little common sense goes a long way.


By the way, you said, "he already uses firefox as his internet explorer"

The correct term is "web browser" (as in it's used to browse the web).
Internet Explorer is a web browser, made by Microsoft.
Firefox is another web browser, made by Mozilla.
etc.
 
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It's a widows scam

My wife had the same message and she only uses Safari. How can the number of sites visited be the same for everyone who receives this message. Ignore it and let your son get on with his adolescence.
 

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