Fake MSE warning

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This has happened a couple of times. After clicking on a newspaper favorite in IE 11, the background goes vivid red with what purports to be MSE window (but not really a window) saying that a Trojan virus has been detected. It also included a pop up window with verbiage about Trojans and that I need to call a toll free number for help. The address line and tab have what looks like random numbers and letters. This last time I ran MSE and Sept’s Malicious Software Removal Tool both of which found nothing. To be safe I opened Task Manager and killed the IE process. Didn’t trust the X close or cancel button. I wonder how wide spread this attach is?

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I suppose it is happening a lot. A number of my clients have admitted that it happened to them, and at least four of those have admitted that they called the number. One lady even gave a “Microsoft tech” (who she mistakenly thought she was speaking with) her credit card details! (Shortly afterward she changed her mind, hung up her phone, then phoned me instead. I advised her to immediately phone her credit card company and tell them what she’d done.)
The crooks tell callers that they’ll fix their problems but what they do is screw up the frightened person’s computer so that they either pay them to fix it, or they have to seek assistance from local technicians.
I detest such scammers! (It’s especially embarrassing to victims because they didn’t have to phone the crooks to initiate the whole thing, at least not if they had simply thought it through beforehand.)

Image or Clone often! Backup, backup, backup, backup......
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Home Built: Windows 10 Home 64-bit, AMD Athlon II X3 435 CPU, 16GB RAM, ASUSTeK M4A89GTD-PRO/USB3 (AM3) motherboard, 512GB SanDisk SSD, 3 TB WD HDD, 1024MB ATI AMD RADEON HD 6450 video, ASUS VE278 (1920x1080) display, ATAPI iHAS224 Optical Drive, integrated Realtek HD Audio

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Anytime anything pops open and is in any way suspicious, hit CTRL-ALT-DEL and choose Task Manager. Kill the popup via Task Manager, so that you don’t have to click on it. Then run a legitimate malware scan.

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

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