Landing on a Malicious Web Page-DO NOT SHUT OFF YOUR COMPUTER! [TIP]

It has come to my attention that many of you panic when landing on a web page that tells you there is a virus on your system and to call a specific number. By panic, I mean you simply push the power button on your computer and figure it will stop the problem.  It might, but you also might not be able to turn on your computer again!  I posted something very similar about this not too long ago and this is pretty much the same thing.

At this point I have not yet determined if it was just a coincidence or not, but two out of the four clients that this happened to that did shut off their computer resulted in "no drive" error upon starting it up. It is possible that the hard drive simply didn't like the sudden shut down of power and caused the imminent failure but it is also possible there was malicious code at work that could have run a "delete drive c:" or format command.  I have determined that one of the two drives was recoverable to the point the data was still wiped but the drive could handle a new partitioning and formatting. The other drive was toast!

There is actually a very SIMPLE SOLUTION!  As you will notice you can not just click on the X in the upper right to close that window and/or the browser but you should be able to RIGHT CLICK on the task bar at the bottom and choose TASK MANAGER from the menu window.  Once the task manager is open just click on the open browser (chrome or whatever you are using--firefox, avant, edge, internet explorer) and END TASK.  

The key next is when you open the browser again, at least in the case of Chrome, you will be presented with the option to 'RESTORE PAGE' which you obviously DO NOT want to do.  Chrome recognizes it was shut down incorrectly or 'crashed' so that is why you are getting the restore option.

That's it.. nothing more to do.. but be aware of what caused this.  I have numerous reports that it happened when they were using facebook so go figure!  It is not uncommon for malicious script/web links to appear on your facebook feed so be careful.  A simple way to know for sure is to PAY ATTENTION TO WHERE YOU ARE CLICKING by means of hovering your mouse pointer over the link before you click and note the url that it is going to (chrome status bar is in the lower left). For example, if you are within your facebook feed and you want to click on something, when you point at it but do not click, and you see the url is something like   http://facebook.com/group/.... then it is safe, but if it is something like http://on.fb.me/1QSrViv  DON'T BE CLICKING.. even if this web url is legit, you can't tell because it has been shortened through a website url compression site like bit.ly 

Just remember regardless of what website you land on DO NOT be calling any phone number and DO NOT be PRESSING POWER OFF on your computer.