I got an onscreen notice saying that something in firefox was outdated

Question

I got an onscreen notice saying that something in firefox was outdated. When I clicked the Accept & Install button the following programs automatically loaded onto my computer: HD Player-MTCD16044,
PC speed clean, VO Package, VLC Media Player, Any Product, & My PC Backup. Did any, or all of these programs come as part of a Firefox update? Did the come from Firefox at all? If not, how did the get to my computer? In retrospect this seems all to similar to the recent IE problems. If they have, or had, nothing to do with firefox how do I get rid of them? If they did come from Firefox which ones are necessary & which ones are just junk? In the future how do I detect legitimate update from bogus ones?

Answer 1

hello RMKPhoto, this is a scam tactic that is trying to trick you into installing ad- & malware! only download firefox from its official location at mozilla.org - in addition updates are handled automatically by firefox so you don't have to download anything (you can initiate a check for updates in the firefox ''menu [[Image:New Fx Menu]] > help [[Image:Help-29]] > about firefox'') - as a rule of thumb: if something is prompting you to download and run a .exe file in order to update firefox this will be fake!
you might also want to run a full scan of your system with the security software already in place and different tools like the [http://www.malwarebytes.org/products/malwarebytes_free free version of malwarebytes], [http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/download/adwcleaner/ adwcleaner] & [http://www.kaspersky.com/security-scan kaspersky security scan] in order to make sure that there isn't already some sort of malware active on your system that triggers these false alerts.
[[Troubleshoot Firefox issues caused by malware]]
you could also help by pressing F10 & going to ''help > report web forgery'' while you're on a dubious page that send out such notifications - this might get the page into the list of malicious sites that get blocked in firefox (the actual list is maintained by google) or when such pages use the firefox logos or trademarks to trick users into downloading malware you could also file it at https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/legal/fraud-report/.