virus problem

pyb12 wrote:

After browsing a website the screen came up saying I had a virus on my Mac in fact it came up on my iPad. It shows the official Apple website also showing the Apple care logo. It asked me to scan which I did then came up saying several problem were detected on my Mac. I stopped it after that and closed the page.

considering I was using my iPad at the time as my Mac is not even switched on.

can anybody help with this?

It's a scam. Clicking "scan" did nothing but bring up the window saying you had problems. Nothing was actually scanned. Never give personal information on such sites and you'll be fine.

For starters, you likely DID NOT have a virus. If you do not have anti-virus software installed on your system, a website cannot detect that you have a virus. It is a message to trick you into doing something you probably should not do.

Secondly, and it is too late now, you should NEVER click / interact with messages like this as these messages are meant to and can do harm to your computer or device. In the future, you should do whatever you can to shut down your browser or app that displayed this message without interacting with the message itself.

I'd keep an eye on the behavior of your devices for awhile to make sure they are functioning properly and not doing anything unexpected.

ResortCasual wrote:

For starters, you likely DID NOT have a virus. If you do not have anti-virus software installed on your system, a website cannot detect that you have a virus. It is a message to trick you into doing something you probably should not do.

It's not "unlikely" that the OP had a virus. It's actually impossible unless they had jailbroken their iPad.

Secondly, and it is too late now, you should NEVER click / interact with messages like this as these messages are meant to and can do harm to your computer or device. In the future, you should do whatever you can to shut down your browser or app that displayed this message without interacting with the message itself.

Interacting with the message is unlikely to do any harm. All those "scan" buttons do is bring up the window that says there is a problem. They don't actually scan anything. On an iPad, they can't download anything. And, on an updated Mac, unnotarized software can't be automatically installed from such a site.