Hi Shane, that's a scam to convince you to buy whatever they are selling. You were right not to call them.

Unfortunately, companies are very clever in how they get you to their scam pages. I hope the developers can figure out even more clever ways to block them, but until then, it's handy to know some tips for clearing them:

(1) The alert messages

If what you got was like a page someone linked to the other day (see attached screenshot), when you "OK" the first alert dialog off the screen, it appears again. It should have a checkbox indicating that you do not want Firefox to show any more alerts for that page. Checking that and clicking OK should allow you to avoid further torment (other than from the annoying recorded voice) and close the tab normally.

(That checkbox was added in direct response to attack pages popular a few years ago.)

(2) The reloading sign-in dialog

This one says you need to call to get a code and every time you close the login dialog the page immediately reloads and redisplays the dialog to make you think there's no way out. Pressing the Esc key numerous times quickly will cancel the reload cycle so you can close the tab.

(3) The next dirty trick

To be determined! There's always something new sooner or later.

Some other general things to think about:

(1) In search engine results, beware of the ads. Often the first item or three on the page is a paid ad that is just bait for this kind of scam. Look for an icon or background color or other indication of ads vs. native results.

(2) Consider using an ad blocker to cut down on diversions on popular sites. For example: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/ublock-origin/

(3) You can change how Firefox starts up after you "kill" it: instead of Firefox automatically reloading all the tabs, you can set it to display a list so you can deselect unwanted tabs. Here's how you do that:

(i) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter/Return. Click the button promising to be careful.

(ii) In the search box above the list, type or paste sess and pause while the list is filtered

(iii) Double-click the browser.sessionstore.max_resumed_crashes preference and change the value from 1 to 0 (that's a zero) and click OK

Please do not change any other sessionstore preferences without researching or asking about them first.

Hope this helps.

By the way, thanks for sharing your add-on data. Any idea where "Search Incognito" version 0.1.0 came from? I think that might be an impostor you need to remove.

You can view, disable, and often remove unwanted or unknown extensions on the Add-ons page. Either:

• Ctrl+Shift+a (Mac: Command+Shift+a)
• "3-bar" menu button (or Tools menu) > Add-ons

In the left column, click Extensions. Then cast a critical eye over the list on the right side. All extensions are optional. If in doubt, disable.

Often a link will appear above at least one disabled extension to restart Firefox. You can complete your work on the tab and click one of the links as the last step.

Any improvement?

Note: If the suspect extension isn't listed there, it may have a "self-hiding" feature. More on that if needed.

Also, consider some supplemental scans in case you installed a bundle of free, um, crap. Troubleshoot Firefox issues caused by malware

If it's like the fake FBI/Interpol browser lock page, This add-on can stop such pages; disallow Script Button {web link} The Disallow Script button looks like a letter "M" and the title is the Minus Script, drag and drop the button on a toolbar. If the button is not displayed then nothing operates, except rules for plugins.