Phishing Trip #2,013: Your Browser's Fallen and It Can't Get Up

Plus mage +Stephen Allen  posted a note from the ever-vigilant anti-badness company
+Malwarebytes  (thanks Stephen, great call to post this) about a new vector of attack:

Clever pages pretending to be your favorite browser (of at least three at the moment) show up suddenly on your screen, that tell you an emergency update is needed, and you'd better do it right now.

If you try to click away from these pages, you get pop-ups telling you "later is a bad idea, do it now!" that are very, very difficult to get around.

"Oh, no, you would never fall for it.  Except..."

We're all in a hurry while we're - well, while we're doing everything.  And when a message gets in our face often times we're just like, 'yeah, OK, but hurry up fuccrissakes and git'er'done quick, all right?'

In this case, not a good idea, really, so please, take a moment right now and read the post from the nice folks at Malwarebytes, which is here.  

If you have not already done so, I absolutely recommend purchasing Malwarebytes for all of your PCs in the house.  Sure, you have Symantec or similar, but .... do this anyway, because you won't be sorry if and when you are exposed to something awful in your travels.  Sure, it's free to download after you need it, but do you really want to be looking to download something when you're trying to remove something you already downloaded?  

Hmmmm.  I thought not.

"...I don't care what they say, so long as they get my name right in the paper"

I've heard this comment a number of times.  Mostly attributed to attorneys or Snidely Whiplash types, and the idea behind it of course is that no publicity is bad publicity.  This is true especially on the internets, where as on Tralfamadore, everybody knew, knows, and will know, your name.  Forever.

If you are at all like me, you tend to bark about things you dislike in addition to those that you like, and this can cause a conundrum:  How do I tell you about the heinous behavior of, say, "Company X" without increasing their web page's hit rate?  This is exactly what Do Not Link is for, as described in this article by Tim Farley.