See a browser alert reading “http://www.alerts-safari.info” and telling you to call 1-800-870-3001? It is a browser hijacking – don’t worry and don’t call.

If you enter a misspelled url or click the wrong link you might wander into a crude attempt at browser hijacking.

A window will immediately pop up, one that looks like this:

It sounds scary, and your computer will seem to be locked. You can’t close the window permanently – as soon as you click the OK button it will disappear then pop right back up again. And you won’t be able to close that browser tab or window, and if you force quit the browser (even rebooting the machine) the problem is likely to reappear as soon as you open the browser again.

But no matter what don’t call the number – the people that answer will want money to fix a problem that they created and, as a bonus, they’ll install even more malware and ransomware on your machine. It becomes a very difficult problem to fix.

Fortunately it’s quite easy to just nip it in the bud – simply click the “Don’t show more alerts from this webpage” button (it was added by Apple to help you avoid this kind of browser hijack) and the window should disappear.

The perpetrators will make one more attempt to scare you, showing you a message like the one below:

It looks like some kind of system warning but it’s not, it’s just a web page disguised as a warning. Simply ignore it and close that tab or window.

If that doesn’t work, or you don’t see the “Don’t show more alerts from this webpage” checkbox here are more ways to escape this kind of browser hijack.