ACK! Adware/Spyware!!

About a year ago - after owning my MAC for over a year - just for fun, I decided to run an adware/spyware/tracking cookie scan on my iBook. And to my pleasure, nothing came up.

But, for the last couple of days, I've been automatically, and seemingly randomly redirected to a site trying to sell me ErrorSafe software. PC users are probably more than familiar with this uber nuisance, but I had been blissfully oblivious... until now. This kind of thing used to happen all the time on my PC, but I'd *never* experienced anything like this on my MAC. I decided to use (the free demo of) MacScan once again, only this time, it found 32 instances of spyware. From 0-32 in a year!

To be fair, I do recall receiving an ErrorSafe pop-up that asked if I wanted to download the software. I didn't click "No" (thinking that was most certainly a trick), but instead hit the "x" to close the window altogether. This is, apparently, how it gets you. I may as well have just clicked "Yes".

If you see this ErrorSafe pop-up/window, immediately hit cmd+Q to close your browser; it's the only way to prevent this thing from getting on your system.

I have read that this annoying ad is just that for MAC users; an annoying ad, and does not pose any sort of threat to my system, but still; finding 32 tracking cookies was not what I had expected.

Fortunately, MacScan seemed to do the trick. I have since gone into my Firefox privacy settings and I am now only accepting session cookies from trusted sites. Phew!