Fake Firefox Annoyance

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Does anyone know about the fake Firefox, Update I guess, and a program to get rid of it? I’m sick of it appearing whenever I log on to Yahoo.

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How do you get the update notification and what does it say?

cheers, Paul

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It happens sometimes when I’m browsing, usually in Yahoo. The page gets redirected to another. It’s titled “Urgent Firefox Update”, firefox-patch.js, download now. It’s fake malware c*** trying to put s*** on my PC. I just want to know how to stop it.

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Run AdwCleaner

https://www.malwarebytes.com/adwcleaner/

Run a thorough virus scan with Malwarebytes

https://www.malwarebytes.com/

Install Adblock Plus to stop it happening again.

https://adblockplus.org/

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Mozilla suggests using an ad-blocker: mozilla support; I found a fake Firefox update

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The way to check for genuine FF updates is from within FF. Go to Help > About Firefox, and it will tell you if it’s up to date or if there is an update available. To get an update, just click to download it, then restart FF and check again. For this to work, you need to go to Tools > Options > Advanced, and select “Check for updates but let me choose whether to install them”. You also need to be running FF as an administrator to apply an update.

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The way to check for genuine FF updates is from within FF. Go to Help > About Firefox, and it will tell you if it’s up to date or if there is an update available. To get an update, just click to download it, then restart FF and check again. For this to work, you need to go to Tools > Options > Advanced, and select “Check for updates but let me choose whether to install them”. You also need to be running FF as an administrator to apply an update.

Also, you can download the latest FF “offline” installer from: http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/all/ (handy if you want install it on more than one computer).

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[It]’s happening again. Ran adwcleaner and Malwarebytes and they didn’t find anything. It hadn’t been happening for awhile so I thought they worked but now . . . Is there anything stronger?

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The problem isn’t with malware on your PC, its caused by JavaScript embedded in adds on the web pages you visit, and there are apparently a lot of sites affected. You could block JavaScript completely, which is something of a nuclear option in that your browser will not work properly with sites still using JavaScript, even the usefull ones. That being said:-

Type the following text into Firefox’s address bar and hit the Enter key: about:config

A new tab will now open displaying a warning message that “This might void your warranty!” Click on the button labeled I’ll be careful, I promise!
A list of Firefox Preferences should now be visible. Locate the entry with a Preference Name value of javascript.enabled.
Double-click on this entry so that its Value is set to false.
JavaScript is now disabled in your Firefox browser. To re-enable it at any time, simply double-click on this entry again so that its Value is set to true.

The alternative is the NoScript add on which blocks JavaScript and lets through safe sites on the Whitelist principle, so it does have to be trained.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-gb/firefox/addon/noscript/

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Adblock Plus should also keep the miscreants at bay – I have virtually no ads on pages I visit.

cheers, paul

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