That fake CAPTCHA page got me last month in Sacramento

I clicked a "verify you're human" box on a random site and it downloaded a browser hijacker, took me 3 hours and Malwarebytes to clean up. That script looked so legit, has anyone else seen these fake CAPTCHA popups on news sites?

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the_spencer3d ago

Getting hit by one of those really sucks and I'm glad you got it cleaned up, but blaming the news sites is where I see it different. Most of those fake CAPTCHA boxes are not coming from the site itself. They ride in through sketchy ad networks, and the ad slots get sold and resold so many times that nobody really knows what ends up in them. The box that says "verify you're human" is doing the opposite of what it says, since a real CAPTCHA never needs you to click anything that downloads a file. The tip that helped me most is simple: if a human check ever asks you to run something or press Windows key plus R, close the tab right away, no matter how real it looks. Ad blockers cut down on these a lot too, since the junk usually comes from the ad, not the article.

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