I had a lengthy appointment with a client yesterday.   They had a fake anti-virus scam pop up that took over their computer.   They panicked in the moment over several days — did not call me (big mistake) — and gave the scam outfit (without even knowing the company name or location) $900 in Apple gift cards purchased from local pharmacies.    There is a lot to this story that I won’t get into here but…..

It is very likely that it all started when reading an article on Yahoo News.  A bad ad injected scripts into their browser which triggered downloads and other things.  Yahoo may not have screened the ad carefully or the ad may have been provided by a 3rd party.   The client’s guard was down, in part because, the ad blocker was turned off. 

One may say — well I didn’t click the ad!  It doesn’t matter.  The mere fact that a malicious ad loads in the first place is the vector for attack. 

I am fairly certain that I have installed ad blockers in your browsers.  On Safari for the Mac, I prefer Ad Block Plus (with acceptable ads turned off).   On Chrome or Firefox, I like uBlock Origin (ideally) or Ad Block Plus (with acceptable ads turned off).  It is always good to have multiple browsers available for use on your computer should Browser A get corrupted. 

Some content providers, increasingly, want you to turn off an ad blocker temporarily.  I have had to do this when watching TV episodes on NBC.com.  A few years back Yahoo said they were not going to let you use Yahoo Mail in the web browser if you blocked ads.  They seem to have backtracked a bit.  

My client’s experience was not the first time I have come across a bad ad injected through a Yahoo.com page.  

Bottom line:  DO NOT EVER EVER TURN THE AD BLOCKER OFF ON A YAHOO.COM PAGE.   If they say you can’t use the page otherwise, accept it and move on.  You can still access your Yahoo Mail on a smartphone or on the computer via an e-mail program like Apple Mail, Outlook, Thunderbird, etc.

If you see ads on Yahoo.com, it means your ad blocker is not installed or not working.