You're right, Mozilla does not have support by phone. Anyone offering support by phone for Firefox probably is a private (and paid) service. It might not be possible to figure out what happened during your session, so we probably should try to move forward from here.

There are security products for your Mac that may help you "clean up." A popular one, because it's free, is Avast: https://www.avast.com/en-us/free-mac-security

Does Safari still work? It's important to have a working backup browser in case your Firefox settings become damaged.

Regarding sites that do not load, have you noticed any pattern, for example, particular sites every time, or particular types of content such as videos?

Thank you for your reply! What I'm wanting to know is how can I find out for sure whether or not I have a virus. I downloaded something called ClamXav. Apparently it is supposed to detect viruses. An icon came up that said Warning, but when I click on it, it doesn't give any kind of clear message. How do interpret this? Is this something that Apple store can help with?

When I was speaking with the scammer, he entered a url into my computer that made a window pop up. I think this was the virus. Afterwards none of the browsers worked. Then I took it to a tech person who I was very disappointed with because he charged me quite a lot of money and he didn't look for the virus. He told me that macs don't get viruses. After I got my computer back from him the browsers worked better, but they still sometimes stop working. When they stop working, it's not that it's taking a long time for something to load, it's that the twirling rainbow, never, ever stops. Wednesday night when I was in Chrome the screen just froze and a message appeared that said something about the program not responding and do I want to wait for it to respond or do I want to "kill" it. The happened a number of times that evening. So far the only pattern is that the problems seem to happen at my house, but not at the cafe. The tech guy said that this might be due to my internet service, but that doesn't make sense, because this never happened until after I spoke with the scammer.

Does the program you mentioned called Avast also tell you if it found a virus? I'd really like to know what happened. I'm also wondering if Avast is user friendly. Clearly ClamXav is not because I have no idea how to interpret the information it's sharing with me.

Thanks again,

Julia

I haven't used Avast myself, sorry. Maybe you can get an idea from its website whether its reports are more helpful than the other product.

One difference at your house would be your router/cable modem/DSL modem. Did the "support" person go into its settings?

See also:

• https://www.malwarebytes.org/antimalware/mac/

Try to disable IPv6 (check for other possible causes as well).

• https://support.mozilla.org/kb/firefox-cant-load-websites-other-browsers-can

Dear Jscher, In your last post you mentioned that, "It might not be possible to figure out what happened during your session." Do you mean that I might not be able to figure out whether or not the scammer put a virus or malware in my computer? So the idea is that you use a clean-up device and assume that the virus has been cleared? My primary concern is not to make sure that my internet service is working. My primary concern is to make sure that there isn't a worm, virus, malware, or hacker that can steal my personal information. Do people simply regularly use a clean up device like the kind you mentioned? Or should I purchase a firewall? Or a malware protection?

It is difficult to judge the severity of the situation. I would start with trustworthy antivirus/cleanup programs and see whether your symptoms are resolved.

Thank you Jscher. I will try those out. Cor-el, I will try out your suggestions as well. Have a great weekend!