Hello everyone,

Many of my clients get really nervous when a sudden pop-up appears on their computer screen. It seems that more and more these pop-ups claim to be free antivirus removal or system optimizing programs, but of course they are not. They are actually fake, phony, rouge programs that want to trick you into installing them on your computer! Everyone asks me what they should do when they see one of these pop-up alerts.

Today I would like to teach you the best way to shut down these malicious pop-up scams. You will not infect your machine if you follow these instructions:

1) When you first see the pop-up, DON’T CLICK ON ANYTHING! Clicking on something in the pop-up window will infect your machine – you will actually be installing the program that you want to get rid of.

2) NEVER CLICK ON THE RED X! The Red X which usually closes a program can be coded to act as an ‘OK’ button in many cases. Just follow rule #1 and DON’T CLICK ON ANYTHING!

3) Press Ctrl+Alt+Delete on your keyboard (all three keys pressed down at the same time). This will bring up the Windows Task Manager (see above photo).

4) Find the pop-up window process and highlight it by clicking on it once. It is properly highlighted when it turns blue (like in the above photo).

5) Click on End Task (End Process) (see above photo). The pop-up process will close and the pop-up window will disappear from your screen – you have avoided infecting your computer!

Professor Randy says: Don’t be tricked by these phony programs! They want you to click on them, but don’t “take the bait”. Stay calm and close them down using the above method.