While visiting a website on your Android phone, a popup alert suddenly appears that claims that your phone has several viruses that you will need to remove immediately.
The messages, which often include the Google logo, warn that if you do not take action to remove the viruses within just a few minutes, you will lose all of the information stored on your phone and the device will no longer work correctly.
The warnings urge you to click a button to remove the virus. Once the alerts have appeared, you may find that you cannot close them or go to any other web pages in your browser.
If one of these alerts appears, do not tap any buttons or links that it contains. The claim that viruses have been detected on your phone is untrue. Your phone has not been scanned for viruses. And, despite the included logo, these alerts have no connection to Google.
In fact, they are scams designed to trick you into downloading malicious apps or visiting malicious websites.
If you click the “Remove Virus” button, you will often be prompted to install an “anti-virus” app that will supposedly scan and clean your phone. However, the app itself will contain malware and it certainly will not effectively clean or protect your device.
Once installed, the malware may attempt to collect sensitive information such as passwords from your phone or perform other nefarious actions without your knowledge. And, the fake scanner may pretend to find a great many new viruses on your phone and then urge you to pay a fee to have them removed.
In some cases, clicking the button may take you to porn websites or sites that promote other types of fraudulent activity such as survey scams.
Here’s What to Do If You get One of The Fake Virus Alerts
As noted the fake alert may hijack your browser and prevent you from closing it. Also, even if you can close the web page, the fake alert may continue to appear in subsequent browsing sessions.
Do not tap the “Remove Virus” button or any other link in the alert message.
Instead, follow the steps below. Note that the exact procedure may vary somewhat depending on what type of Android phone and what browser you are using.
1: While you may not be able to close the browser tab containing the popup, you should be able to close other open tabs. Make sure that you close all other tabs in your browser before proceeding to the next steps.
2: Go to Settings
3: Open Apps. Depending on your device, this menu item may be labelled Applications, Application Manager or similar.
4: In the app list, find and tap the name of the browser you are using. It may be the name of the actual browser (for example, Chrome ). Or it may simply be labelled “Internet” or “browser”.
5. Tap Force Stop to completely shut down the browser.
6. Tap Storage.
7. Tap Clear Cache.
Once your browser cache is cleared, your browser should work normally again and the fake alert should no longer appear.
Similar Scams Target iPhone Users
While this report discusses fake virus alerts that appear on Android devices, note that similar types of scams also target iPhone and iPad users. The Apple website has more information about these scams here.
A screenshot of one of the fake alerts:
5 comments
I was also able to go back through the browser history on my phone, find the URL to at least one of the fake alerts, and block it through Chrome on my laptop, which seems to have worked as well, at least for that one.
After you force stop Chrome and clear everything, you should probably reboot your phone. My LG froze initially, but after I finally got it to reboot, it was fine.
I have tried and followed the steps as you instructed and I hope that is works. The screenshot you posted on this webpage is exactly what I saw. It opened multiple tabs on my browser and kept appearing every 20 mins.
Thanks a lot for your tips.
Nice, fake virus alert has old Google logo which is from 2014. This is how fake virus warning look likes.
The fake message not just spams but even can beep or vibrate the phone which is scary. The work around for it is as suggested to clear or reset the browser.
I work at an apple store. One night right at closing a gentleman and his wife came by the store and showed me the warning on his iPhone. The man was, I would guess about 80 years old. I am in my 60s. So at first, he wanted to talk to me because, I suppose, he felt comfortable with someone in his own age group.
“Sir, this is most likely fake. If you have a virus on your phone,” I dislike absolutes, “yours would be one of the first.”
“But how do I get rid of it?”
“Sir, it’s fake. Don’t worry about it.” I had his phone in settings and I cleared all his cookies and browser history. “It’s fake.”
“Get me someone younger. How can you know what you are talking about?” The flip side of being in his age group: figuring I know as little as he does.
“Sir. They tell you to go to the Google Play store to get the antivirus and …”
“I know. How do I get the Google Play store on my iPhone. I can’t find it in the App Store.”
“Sir, Google Play is the Android Operating System’s Appr Store. You can’t get it. The makers of this bull —- oney didn’t even detect your device correctly. There are other clues. They suggest that ypu may have gotten a virus from looking at porn. Really? Who would watch porn on a 5 inch screen?” His wife laughed so hard at that she snorted.
“I HAVEN”T BEEN LOOKING AT PORN.”
“I know. I was making a joke. Besides, you’re more likely to get a virus from a church web site. Porn is big business. Church sites are amateur hour.”
“Are you sure there’s no virus?”
“I am never sure of anything. But if you have one, it would be a first and I would have one too.”
These people are so bad at what they do.