Fake Malware ad present today.

[River's Edge]

When I was looking at the site this morning, not signed in at the time. My cursor must have hovered over an ad. I did not click, Up popped a series of screens claiming my computer had been locked and I needed to contact Mac. Advising me to not try and close or shut down the computer. You may wish to check what is popping up today.
Thanks Frank

 

[palafr01]

@Bonsai Nut

 

[Wires_Guy_wires]

These ads are served by google adsense.
I don't think bonsainut has any control over what is served.

 

[The Barber]

These ads are served by google adsense.
I don't think bonsainut has any control over what is served.

Was getting ready to say this. If you click the x in the top right corner of the add, it gives you a menu, can ignore ads of this type etc.

 

[River's Edge]

Was getting ready to say this. If you click the x in the top right corner of the add, it gives you a menu, can ignore ads of this type etc.

The warning of a locked computer with link to Phishing site is separate from ads that are not preferred. For the record the right click on the x did not work in this case. The method of removal was to take the curser to the far left and close the page behind the page that displayed the warning display that claimed the computer had been locked and one must click on the Malware to get help. I then cleared history, shit down the computer. Waited a few minutes and restarted the computer.
Perhaps my initial explanation was not clear enough. I should have taken a screenshot with my camera prior to removal.
Two reasons I mentioned it.
1. so administrator of the site was aware.
2. so other users did not get tricked by the ad.

 

[Wires_Guy_wires]

The warning of a locked computer with link to Phishing site is separate from ads that are not preferred. For the record the right click on the x did not work in this case. The method of removal was to take the curser to the far left and close the page behind the page that displayed the warning display that claimed the computer had been locked and one must click on the Malware to get help. I then cleared history, shit down the computer. Waited a few minutes and restarted the computer.
Perhaps my initial explanation was not clear enough. I should have taken a screenshot with my camera prior to removal.
Two reasons I mentioned it.
1. so administrator of the site was aware.
2. so other users did not get tricked by the ad.

You did a good job! If you're using Mac, please consider using the Firefox browser with Ublock origin as an extension. It will block the ads from even loading. It's a bit more clunky and not as nice looking, but a lot safer.
These ads are obnoxious and dangerous, and most browsers I know have a setting to disable this kind of "screen blocking popups". In my country google is not allowed to serve those kinds of ads at all.
I'm not a mac user so I don't know the settings or extensions you could use to help Safari prevent these from showing, but I honestly believe the people at apple would have made some kind of option available against it.
Then again - and I want to stay away from politics - I know the US has next to no regulations in regards to both software intrusiveness and ads, and ad servers might have paid apple a pretty buck to hide those kind of settings in their own favor.

If you can, running a virus scan is advised. Most browsers don't allow any programs to be downloaded and executed without user interference, but hackers are usually faster in finding the holes to poke through.

 

[River's Edge]

You did a good job! If you're using Mac, please consider using the Firefox browser with Ublock origin as an extension. It will block the ads from even loading. It's a bit more clunky and not as nice looking, but a lot safer.
These ads are obnoxious and dangerous, and most browsers I know have a setting to disable this kind of "screen blocking popups". In my country google is not allowed to serve those kinds of ads at all.
I'm not a mac user so I don't know the settings or extensions you could use to help Safari prevent these from showing, but I honestly believe the people at apple would have made some kind of option available against it.
Then again - and I want to stay away from politics - I know the US has next to no regulations in regards to both software intrusiveness and ads, and ad servers might have paid apple a pretty buck to hide those kind of settings in their own favor.

If you can, running a virus scan is advised. Most browsers don't allow any programs to be downloaded and executed without user interference, but hackers are usually faster in finding the holes to poke through.

Appreciate your additional advice. I use a program called Malware which works well with my Mac. I have set more relaxed settings with a couple of trusted sites! Blocking pop up ads had previously interfered with using Bonsai Nut. That is an easy fix, but will curtail the use of this site if necessary. I should note that I previously used U-Block, however with recent upgrades to the Mac OS it no longer worked as well!

 

[The Barber]

The warning of a locked computer with link to Phishing site is separate from ads that are not preferred. For the record the right click on the x did not work in this case. The method of removal was to take the curser to the far left and close the page behind the page that displayed the warning display that claimed the computer had been locked and one must click on the Malware to get help. I then cleared history, shit down the computer. Waited a few minutes and restarted the computer.
Perhaps my initial explanation was not clear enough. I should have taken a screenshot with my camera prior to removal.
Two reasons I mentioned it.
1. so administrator of the site was aware.
2. so other users did not get tricked by the ad.

I only access the forums on my phone, but I've had similar pop ups twice on pc. Pretty gnarly, required a hard restart and start the pc in safe mode, then run the anti-virus software, never on these forums though. That sucks.

 

[Bonsai Nut]

When I was looking at the site this morning, not signed in at the time. My cursor must have hovered over an ad. I did not click, Up popped a series of screens claiming my computer had been locked and I needed to contact Mac. Advising me to not try and close or shut down the computer. You may wish to check what is popping up today.
Thanks Frank

I do not have control of what ads Google serves to the site. In fact, I do not even know what ads you see. All I know is that they are different for each user. I can block broad categories of ads (like adult content, gambling, etc) but unlike years ago, I cannot restrict ad serving to just gardening content.

These ads claiming your PC has been hacked or locked are known as "scareware". If you have the option, report the ad to Google as deceptive advertising. Otherwise just reload the page and you will (hopefully) see new ads.

 

[River's Edge]

I do not have control of what ads Google serves to the site. In fact, I do not even know what ads you see. All I know is that they are different for each user. I can block broad categories of ads (like adult content, gambling, etc) but unlike years ago, I cannot restrict ad serving to just gardening content.

These ads claiming your PC has been hacked or locked are known as "scareware". If you have the option, report the ad to Google as deceptive advertising. Otherwise just reload the page and you will (hopefully) see new ads.

Thanks for the clarification Greg.