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How do I remove a scam "Internet Security Damaged" error box?

  • 6 replies
  • 2 have this problem
  • 8 views
  • Last reply by BobLGNJ

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Went to an odd website. A pop up box appeared at tab line saying Authorization Required. Username & Password requested by http://138.197.23.139. "Internet Security Damaged !!! User Access Suspended!! Call Apple Help Desk at 1-888-316-7391". Based on number on exclamation marks, assuming a scam, I closed Firefox, and rebooted Mac Pro (OS X 10.6.8). Opened Firefox, got same pop up. Cannot open new tab, open menu, or do anything. Closed Firefox. Deleted Firefox. reloaded Firefox from Time Machine from version saved 6 days ago. Rebooted, opened Firefox and got the same popup box. Maybe Firefox version 55 (cannot tell because when I open Firefox, is frozen on the popup, can not open menu, help, about, etc. Am logging question from different pc. Any help much appreciated.

Went to an odd website. A pop up box appeared at tab line saying Authorization Required. Username & Password requested by http://138.197.23.139. "Internet Security Damaged !!! User Access Suspended!! Call Apple Help Desk at 1-888-316-7391". Based on number on exclamation marks, assuming a scam, I closed Firefox, and rebooted Mac Pro (OS X 10.6.8). Opened Firefox, got same pop up. Cannot open new tab, open menu, or do anything. Closed Firefox. Deleted Firefox. reloaded Firefox from Time Machine from version saved 6 days ago. Rebooted, opened Firefox and got the same popup box. Maybe Firefox version 55 (cannot tell because when I open Firefox, is frozen on the popup, can not open menu, help, about, etc. Am logging question from different pc. Any help much appreciated.

Chosen solution

Before I saw the two responses above, I was reading problems with FF menu not running and saw a suggestion about Open FF in Safe Mode. So I tried it (hold option key while starting Firefox. In pop up box that appears click on "Start in safe mode" button). It solved my problem. I then used FredMcD's suggestion about Menu > File > Exit to clear the Session Store file. (never did figure out what Pkshadow suggest was trying to say)

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Another way out of the trap is to (force it if needed) Close Firefox. Wait about 20 seconds for Firefox to finish closing. Right-click on the Firefox icon and select Open New Window. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Sometimes this works. If it opens, close it by Menu > File > Exit. This will flush out that web page from the Session Store.

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All help is appreciated, but unfortunately my Right-click on FF icon has no choice of Open New Window. And once open I can not get to menu, help, new tab, about, etc. I will keep looking.

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Please use more than 1 scanner as each uses diff tech : https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/troubleshoot-firefox-issues-caused-malware Save your Report and google each before deleting anything as do not want to delete something you need, If need help : https://forums.malwarebytes.com/topic/9573-im-infected-what-do-i-do-now/ Post in only 1 forum, then wait.

Please let us know if this solved your issue or if need further assistance.

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Usually when you have dialogs that appear in a page and prevent you from leaving or using the interface, you can escape using one of these methods:

(A) Two-line dialog asking for username and password: press the Esc key numerous times to break the cycle

(B) Very tall dialog with text: look near the bottom left for a checkbox that says you do not want any more dialogs from the page, check that box, then click OK

These pages seems to be launched from "malvertisements" (ads driving users to malware distribution pages). If you haven't considered using an ad blocker, perhaps this is the time. This one is popular:

https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/ublock-origin/

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When you crash Firefox to shut it down, of course, Firefox will attempt a crash recovery. When there is a site you want to avoid, you may need to hide your session history files from Firefox so that it can't restore the unwanted page at the next startup. Here's how:

Step #1: Open the profile folder

Windows

Type or paste the following into the Windows Run dialog or the system search box, and press Enter to launch Windows Explorer into this folder:

%APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles

You should see at least one semi-randomly-named profile folder there. (If you see more than one, you'll want to figure out which one has the unwanted session history in it by checking each one.)

Double-click into the profile folder.

Mac or Linux

Your Firefox profile folder would be accessible in a different way than on Windows. Please see these articles for information on how to locate it:

Step #2: Hide session files

  • Right-click the sessionstore-backups folder and rename it to OLDsessionstore-backups (later you can mine the files in this folder for any important tabs you want to restore)
  • Check for any files with these names and:
    • sessionstore.jsonlz4 - created by Firefox 56 when it shuts down normally - rename to OLDsessionstore.jsonlz4
    • sessionstore.js - created by Firefox 55 and earlier when it shuts down normally - rename to OLDsessionstore.js
    • sessionstore.bak - obsolete file from years ago - delete

When you start Firefox up again, it should just show the home page.

Success?

If you need to read the contents of any of those hidden files, you can use this tool on my websites to extract out a list of the tabs:

https://www.jeffersonscher.com/res/scrounger.html

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Chosen Solution

Before I saw the two responses above, I was reading problems with FF menu not running and saw a suggestion about Open FF in Safe Mode. So I tried it (hold option key while starting Firefox. In pop up box that appears click on "Start in safe mode" button). It solved my problem. I then used FredMcD's suggestion about Menu > File > Exit to clear the Session Store file. (never did figure out what Pkshadow suggest was trying to say)

Modified by BobLGNJ