Beware of Clicking Links in Facebook or Anywhere Else

Today I was browsing through Facebook and saw something that looked interesting with a ‘Learn More’ box and stupid me, I clicked it.

And this is what I got:



I couldn’t close this! I clicked OK, nothing. I clicked the x to exit, nothing happened. The tab would not close and I couldn’t go to another tab. The only way to get it to close was to go to Task Manager and close Firefox.

This is designed to panic users so they will call the number on this screen and then the scammers will attempt to sell their sleazy product and or steal credit card numbers.

Apparently this is not a new scam as it has been documented on a number of sites such as Hoax Slayer, one of my favorite sites.

Now I am trying to figure out how they get this file to block me from exiting my browser. The file is a picture file, jpeg, ping or other, but something is preventing it from being closed and I really would like to know what!

To avoid getting a malicious site by clicking a link, see where it’s going by hovering over the link and see what is showing before you click.

Web Site Stuff That Bugs Me

There are a lot of things about some web sites that make me cringe. The worst is when I go to a site and a video starts playing and blasts me with sound. Most website designers know this is not good idea, but there are some who don’t know or maybe they don’t care. Either way, the first thing I do when I go to one of those sites is leave. Then I figure out how to stop that annoyance. Auto playing videos are evil!

More and more web sites are using a tactic that I just despise, they entice me with a number of things that interest me. Then I must click ‘Next’ repeatedly to view each item. This is also known a clickbait.



I really hate that and will often decide I am not that interested and just go on to something else.

I also hate ‘teaser’ sites. I saw one on Facebook.  It posted a ‘tease’ to get folks to go to their site and I had to click click almost endlessly before it came to the answer. I certainly won’t go back to that site again!

The tease: Real Rarity: Mother Gave Birth to Quadruplets and Then the Doctor Looked at the Face of the Babies and Saw This!  The fact was the babies were identical.

Tiny fonts and light grey colored fonts are not kind to my aging eyes. This forces me to use control plus (ctrl +) to make the fonts bigger and use an extension to change the background to black. Perhaps I am getting blind, but web masters should realize not everyone has perfect vision.

Popups wanting me to ‘Subscribe’. Some of them are even insulting.

This is one of the worst!



That wasn't blocked by most ad blockers.

Some sites won’t let you see their content unless you turn off your ad blocker or pay to see content. I make it a practice never to buy anything from an online ad. In the past, some of the ads online were for malicious sites. Until I am give an ironclad guarantee online ads are safe, I will continue to use an ad blocker.



Social media icons that cover content, so many ads that it takes forever to load a page are all major irritants.

How do I get around those sites that won’t let me see their content unless I disable my ad blocker? I use an extension that disables JavaScript and and then I re-load the page.



But then I have to remember to enable JavaScript or the next page like Facebook may not work.

Setup a Gmail Account and Import Your Yahoo Mail

Since Yahoo accounts have been hacked, you may want to change from Yahoo to another email service like Gmail or outlook. com.

Try Gmail.

If you have a Gmail account, you can import your Yahoo mail into Gmail. If you don’t have a Gmail account, sign up for a new account.



Just follow the prompts.



Be sure to use a valid phone number.

Agree to the privacy and terms.



 







Once you have your account set up, you can import your Yahoo mail and contacts. Go to Settings:



Select Accounts and Import



Add your Yahoo email address here:



Add your Yahoo Account name again and click ‘Continue’.

 

Now click agree to the ShuttleCloud Migration.



Follow the verification process.



 

Now you can import all your Yahoo mail and contacts.



Once you click the ‘Start Import’ button the import will start. It can take a very long time if you have a lot of mail to import.



This is essentially the same process to import sbcglobal mail as Yahoo handles sbcglobal for most accounts

Note: Gmail uses Labels instead of folders.

When I imported my Yahoo mail into Gmail This is what I had. One of the labels on the side was the name of the Yahoo account I imported.

I am not a fan of Labels, but many users really like them. If you are familiar with folders in email you might try Outlook.com to use for your import instead of Gmail.

Set Up an Outlook.com Email Account

If you currently are using a Yahoo email account, you may want to change your email to another service like Google’s Gmail or Microsoft’s Outlook.com (previously Hotmail) becsuse of the Yahoo hacks.

If you decide on outlook.com, here's how.

First go to outlook.com and click ‘Signup’. (To view the screenshots in a larger view, click on the images. To get back to the post, just click the back button on your browser.



Fill out the form:



Now you will see something like this:





Choose a theme, but you can just leave it without a theme.



Setup your signature:



Outlook.com is easily customized. Lots of options available by clicking the ‘gear’ by your name.





To Access Calendar, Contacts and other Microsoft products, click that little box of colored squares on the top left:



Set your calendar up by clicking the Calendar box as shown in the picture above.



Outlook.com can be customized so many ways. After you create your account, just play with all the settings until you have it setup the way you want it to be.