“I need Apple advice,” My sister texted me last week. “I got a message that my computer is blocked due to an unexpected error. It gives me a number to call to fix it. Does that sound legit?”
No. It did not sound legit. What’s worse, the error message gave her an 800 number to call, which she did, and the person on the other end of the line offered to share her screen and tried to sell her $200 in security software.
That was the point at which her instincts kicked in and she got off the call and asked me for help. The culprit in all this was a pop-up message in Safari, which read in part: “Your Apple Computer has been blocked. Mac iOS alert! System might be infected due to unexpected error! Your Browser might be hijacked or hacked.”
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