Guest User!

You are not Sophos Staff.

Thread Info
  • State Not Answered
  • Locked Locked
  • Replies 2 replies
  • Subscribers 6 subscribers
  • Views 2020 views
  • Users 0 members are here
Options
Suggested
This discussion has been locked.
You can no longer post new replies to this discussion. If you have a question you can start a new discussion

Sophos does not detect pop-up malware

JWMac

I am running the free Sophos version on my home MAC.  It is updated hourly with the latest AV changes.  I am getting viral pop-up messages when I am in Firefox about every 5 minutes.  They are all full page solicitations asking me to provide personal info and/or click on links provided to collect "my prize", often a free iPhone or iPad.  The pop-ups are titled variously "Weekly Contest Winner", "Daily Contest Winner", "Congratulations", "Walmart Visitor Survey", etc.  I have run a complete system scan and Sophos "detects no threats".  I have rebooted but that has not solved the problem either.  Is anyone else having this problem?  Does anyone have any suggestions for how I can clean/eliminate this malware from my system?

:1004277


This thread was automatically locked due to age.
  • 0

    What web page are you on when you get these popups?

    Since you're in Firefox, do you have the noscript and adblockplus plugins installed, as well as having "block popup windows" enabled?

    What you're describing could be one of two things: either you're visiting web pages that have popups, or you've let something mess with your DNS server settings, and you're being force-fed these ads.

    Of course, if Firefox launches without your interaction and starts showing these pages, then you've got something malicious on your system.  Otherwise, you're just a victim of the world wide web's ability to serve pop-ups.

    Does this happen in Safari?

    :1004283
  • 0
    Thanks for your feedback, Andrew. The problem seems to have resolved itself since I created this post. Don't have a clue why or how. It seemed to be happening randomly on various web pages/sites. I did not have a chance to test if it happened also in Safari. Could an anti-malware update from Sophos earlier today have taken care of it? In any case, at your suggestion, I have since enabled "block popup windows" and have also installed noscript and adblockplus. Hopefully, these steps will prevent a recurrence. Thanks again for your help. Jim
    :1004289