Fake malware/virus messages on websites

[katz]

I have a client who gets into these fake malware/virus messages on websites about twice or so each week. Most of the time it is on news or financial website. i assume she is clicking on click-bait/ads or something. We just recently upgraded her old Win 7 pc to a brand spankin' new Win 10 system and she is have the same issues.

I know, you can't "fix" stupid, if your gonna click on goofy ads, be prepared to suffer the consequences. However, she is a good client, drops a lot of $$$ in my pocket, so I'd like to be able to keep her happy by offering some sort of solution to this.

Her system is running Defender/firewall active, which is pretty much how I set up almost everyone's system these days, unless they feel the need to have a stronger A/V installed...yet, she is about the only client I have who regularly/weekly gets hit with these fake pop ups...

Any ideas? How to address this?

 

[GTP]

uBlock Origin.

 

[katz]

"uBlock Origin"

O gosh...I should have mentioned that this is an elderly client, resistant to change. You should have heard her squawk when I installed Thunderbird email and it was a different color than the last email program... I can't imagine her response to a different browser than I.E., lol.

But yes, that add on with Chrome would be a good choice for her.

 

[ComputerRepairTech]

how well do those dns services like opendns work on those fake virus sites?

 

[Diggs]

IE is half the problem and Ublock Origin is a plugin/extension to kill those popup ads. People are resistant to change. I've got no words of wisdom to help on that.

 

[Archon Prime]

Just put uBlock Origin on it and tell her to stfu. lol She won't have a clue it's on there. All you do is say if she gets a page that it could be harmful, tell her to go back to her home page. Simple.

 

[carmen617]

What's her home page and does she have a Yahoo account that she's logged in to? I have had clients with brand new computers log onto their Yahoo mail and immediately get bombarded with fake tech support pop-ups - I actually believe the Yahoo servers are infected with something targeted at certain accounts. I've "solved" that problem for my little old ladies by moving their Yahoo mail to a desktop application (sounds like you already have that with Thunderbird), logging them out of their Yahoo account and telling them to NEVER go to Yahoo.

I like uBlock Origin a lot but have found that sometimes it messes up the way websites render - very confusing to the little old ladies out there. So i put that on Chrome and leave Firefox with no add ons. I tell them to use Chrome as long as it works, and if it doesn't to try Firefox. Yes, they don't like change or trying new things, but they also don't like the "viruses" that are yelling at them from their computer. So, a little training, and a little "it's one thing you are not familiar with or another thing that's even worse" pep talk, and they seem to be okay with it all.

 

[JoeTech]

I'm going through this with an elderly lady. I got her to switch from IE to chrome with ublock origin and now she not only is getting fake support ads but tons of unwanted extensions and notifications in the bottom right corner now. I cleaned up and reset chrome and set it to block notifications and made sure ublock was working. Then we told her how she needs to make sure not to click allow on any website notifications. A day later she is complaining again..

This time though she thinks we only made things worse by switching her to chrome and was switching back to IE. She was very unhappy with us and hung up before we could try and help her more. We had kaspersky and cloudflare dns set up on her laptop. I think it's her bad habits that are the main cause of this but I don't know what else we can do to make it stop and make her happy at the same time.

 

[Diggs]

I'm going through this with an elderly lady.

Sigh..... - Been there done that. She would lose a password and set up multiple accounts at the same places (Yahoo, Facebook, etc.) then berate us (my daughter and I) that replies and postings she made were being deleted by something we did 4 months ago when we were there (instead of the fact she posted and used multiple accounts for email, forums, etc.). Nastiest old lady I've ever met. Was the first customer I've ever fired (and then call blocked).

 

[Porthos]

Firefox and Ublock origin (with a few extra filters applied) Defender and MB premium. Malwarebytes also has a stand alone free extension for Firefox and Chrome that I use now as well that is designed for those sites as well(I turn off the clickbait feature though).

 

[LostBit]

How about Adblock Plus for Internet Explorer

 

[JoeTech]

Firefox and Ublock origin (with a few extra filters applied) Defender and MB premium. Malwarebytes also has a stand alone free extension for Firefox and Chrome that I use now as well that is designed for those sites as well(I turn off the clickbait feature though).

I wish I would have remembered about the free standalone extension and tried that. She is a nice old lady but very stubborn so it's going to be hard convincing her to give chrome with that extension another try.