Virus Warning

I have had my new mac book since April, and hadn't had any problems until yesterday. I received a pop-up warning that read:

http://winantiviruspro.net
Attention! Your PC may not have virus protection system. This may lead to your PC being infected.

Now your system will be scanned for security risks. Press ok to continue

I am assuming that this "warning" is not legitimate. When the warning appears, Safari is minimized & I have to do a forced quit to get rid of the warning (if I don't want to click ok).

How can I get rid of this warning (I have the Preferences set to block pop-ups)? Is this actually a legitimate warning? Are there any options for mac that are comparable to Lavasoft AdAware? I used to use it on my PC & it worked great - especially for a free download.

Thanks!

Its a very very safe bet that the warning is a spyware link for windows users. I recommend that you switch to Firefox for day to day browsing. You can find it at www.getfirefox.com.

I get those too on occasion and it's nothing to worry about on the Mac. Switching to FF isn't going to change anything nor will installing Safari-Ad Block. Just close it out and be happy that you are not the intended audience, one of the benefits of using a Mac.

thanks! that's what I was thinking - but wanted to get someone else's opinion

You've been well and truly had.

All it is is an animation.

The same will display on any computer in world, whatever operating system it uses.

Please don't tell me you click the links in emails from banks and ebay as well!

You can usually tell when it starts examining the DLL files on your OS X installation ;0

louishen said:

You can usually tell when it starts examining the DLL files on your OS X installation ;0

Click to expand...

Tickles me every time .

louishen said:

You can usually tell when it starts examining the DLL files on your OS X installation ;0

Click to expand...

Yeah DLL's and .EXE's. OSX is just full of DLL and EXE files!

One that popped up once was checking my Registry in OSX! If that fools anyone I give up!

http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/adware-and-puas/winantiviruspro.html
has all the details - click on 'More Information' to find out what it does.

Cheers

Hugh

louishen said:

You can usually tell when it starts examining the DLL files on your OS X installation ;0

Click to expand...

It did this on my old Linux desktop too. Funny once.

How does one get rid of this thing, it's more of an annoyance than anything.Please advise. Thanks Van

Alexis said:

You've been well and truly had.

All it is is an animation.

The same will display on any computer in world, whatever operating system it uses.

Please don't tell me you click the links in emails from banks and ebay as well!

Click to expand...

Alexis, no offense but I'm not sure you read the post. Nobody said anything about clicking links. Secondly, it probably does install spyware if you are running an XP machine but is likely harmless on Mac OS X.

vank66 said:

How does one get rid of this thing, it's more of an annoyance than anything.Please advise. Thanks Van

Click to expand...

If you install and use Firefox, it should block the pop-up to begin with so you don't see it anymore.

Thank God for Macs. I recently switched from a super old windows machine and the death of it was that exact pop up. My poor mother not knowing much about such things clicked the link and such before I could stop her .... it turned out poorly. I have yet to see it on my eMac, but as soon as it looks for a .exe or dll file, I will commence to laugh.

If you install Firefox, you can also install Adblock which pretty much keeps anything like that from appearing.

I downloaded that file on my mac more than once, to avoid force quit the browser (that was mostly Camino). It is an .exe file. Anyone knows that an .exe file is just inert trash on a Mac. Now I am using Safari with the option to block pop-up and I have not seen that annoying trash for a long time.

Alexis, no offense but I'm not sure you read the post. Nobody said anything about clicking links. Secondly, it probably does install spyware if you are running an XP machine but is likely harmless on Mac OS X.

Click to expand...

I think you misread/misunderstood my post.
Somebody fooled by animated pop windows is likely to click on email links and give their ebay/bank passwords away.

I got this twice awhile back. On the same site both times. I just stopped going to that site, and found the same information on another. I found it on a site that streamed a movie that was not yet released in Canada, and the site looked like it was thrown together within a few hours. I should've known better. Thank Goodness for Macs!

It's advertisement, probably by the same makers that makes the viruses it can clean lol
I hate those advertisements that act like they know what you have

Oh I got something like this on my PC. I knew I had a small virus and it really looked like my antivirus software or something. It downloaded something that deleted my (very expensive) antivirus software -- I think I had McAfee or Nortan -- and somehow limewire started downloading all sorts of viruses. By the time it was over I had to restore to default settings and it took 10 minutes on startup. Computer's never worked the same since. Normally that's just spyware, but I had a far worse experience.