This may help someone else similarly afflicted whether at home or out and about in their motorhome and using a notebook PC.
I occasionally do a bit of window shopping of motorhomes on the Autotrader website as I did that lunchtime taking a few minutes break from work. As I now know I managed to mistype the URL and that allowed a malicious internet page to download. My reading since tells me that was the source of the problem. Apparently there are a number of such sites associated with popular websites which load automatically when you mistype the correct address.
A message immediately flashed up with accompanying blaring sound supposedly from MS Edge saying my PC was infected with named viruses and to click the link to rid my PC of them. I did as bid ... and my Norton antivirus saved me by warning me I was being directed to a dangerous website so I did not proceed. I was exceptionally busy with dead-lined work (on a different PC) and personal commitments at the time. I tried a reboot but that made no difference and ran a virus scan which produced no results (But query had my anti-virus been disabled I asked myself!). Regularly every few minutes the message would pop up bottom right with blaring sound. So which to believe the pop-up or my Norton antivirus?!! Temporarily I just turned the sound off and minimised use of that PC avoiding going to sites which required my password while I tried to discover whether my PC was genuinely infected. I noticed that the pop-up went to sleep at night which rather confirmed my suspicion that this was some form of scam.
Yesterday after work I had time for research and to find a fix. Turns out this sort of thing has been around according to Microsoft since at least 2018. The pop-up loads in the manner I have described above and when you click on the link successfully loads a virus and sets up a ransom demand or directs you to a fake Microsoft number where you are asked to hand over control of your PC for "corrective action" and they download all your passwords and drain your bank accounts etc, etc.
The solution is quite simple. You just need to go to Settings and clear your browsing history from the cache. I chose a period of 7 days for that and - Hey Presto the pop-up was gone and everything is back to normal!
Hope that helps someone!
I occasionally do a bit of window shopping of motorhomes on the Autotrader website as I did that lunchtime taking a few minutes break from work. As I now know I managed to mistype the URL and that allowed a malicious internet page to download. My reading since tells me that was the source of the problem. Apparently there are a number of such sites associated with popular websites which load automatically when you mistype the correct address.
A message immediately flashed up with accompanying blaring sound supposedly from MS Edge saying my PC was infected with named viruses and to click the link to rid my PC of them. I did as bid ... and my Norton antivirus saved me by warning me I was being directed to a dangerous website so I did not proceed. I was exceptionally busy with dead-lined work (on a different PC) and personal commitments at the time. I tried a reboot but that made no difference and ran a virus scan which produced no results (But query had my anti-virus been disabled I asked myself!). Regularly every few minutes the message would pop up bottom right with blaring sound. So which to believe the pop-up or my Norton antivirus?!! Temporarily I just turned the sound off and minimised use of that PC avoiding going to sites which required my password while I tried to discover whether my PC was genuinely infected. I noticed that the pop-up went to sleep at night which rather confirmed my suspicion that this was some form of scam.
Yesterday after work I had time for research and to find a fix. Turns out this sort of thing has been around according to Microsoft since at least 2018. The pop-up loads in the manner I have described above and when you click on the link successfully loads a virus and sets up a ransom demand or directs you to a fake Microsoft number where you are asked to hand over control of your PC for "corrective action" and they download all your passwords and drain your bank accounts etc, etc.
The solution is quite simple. You just need to go to Settings and clear your browsing history from the cache. I chose a period of 7 days for that and - Hey Presto the pop-up was gone and everything is back to normal!
Hope that helps someone!