Her first instinct was to panic-call the number. But she stopped. She remembered a news segment about “tech support scams.” Breathe.
She turned Wi-Fi back on, downloaded Malwarebytes (free version) from a legitimate site, and ran a full scan. It found two adware extensions and one “browser hijacker”—the culprit that had redirected her from the client’s fake email. how to get rid of scam pop ups
She let her hand hover, then pulled it back. The scammer’s goal was fear—get her to dial that number so they could charge $400 to “fix” nothing or install real malware. Her first instinct was to panic-call the number
She reopened her browser offline . It tried to restore the previous session. Don’t let it. She went into history (Ctrl+H) and selected “Clear browsing data” for all time—cookies, cache, site settings. That wiped any malicious script trying to auto-load. She turned Wi-Fi back on, downloaded Malwarebytes (free
When she rebooted, she immediately pulled the Ethernet cable and turned off Wi-Fi (Settings > Network > Off). Scam pop-ups often reload from a cached page or a malicious redirect—no internet, no reload.
From a different device (her phone), she changed her email, banking, and social media passwords. The scam pop-up hadn’t stolen anything yet, but the hijacker could have logged keystrokes.
The pop-up was a perfect clone of a real Windows alert—spinning circle, fake progress bar, even a timer counting down from 300 seconds. Her cursor vanished. Every key press was ignored. Her heart pounded. “No, no, no,” she whispered, thinking of her client invoices, her portfolio, everything on this machine.