I’m experiencing some rather odd malware. It only ever crops up in a single program - Magic Jigsaw Puzzles - and the details of the message always changes. For instance, the voice that tells me I have a security problem changes each time (sometimes British, sometimes American, sometimes male, sometimes female), as does the text of the message and the error code and the toll free number I’m supposed to call to fix the problem. This notification has happened as often as several times a day for a few weeks now. I’ve updated my Avast Free and run both the Smart Scan and the Full Scan without getting this off the computer. I’ve also updated Malware Bytes and run their full scan - twice - without removing it. None of those scans detected anything let alone tried to remove it with the sole exception of a P.U.P. that was found in the Avast Full Scan but removing that didn’t remove this problem.
I’ve never experienced a piece of malware quite like this; usually they mess with your browser or operating system somehow but this one is strictly surfacing in this one app, which I’ve had for years and don’t want to delete. I’d like to be able to do my daily puzzle WITHOUT this nonsense interrupting me. (When the message starts, I can close the program easily enough and that stops the message broadcasting and when I start the program again, it plays fine for a while but eventually the security alert comes up again.)
The application that is producing the message is Magic Jigsaw Puzzles. I am running Windows 10. The alert comes up in the advertising portion of app - there is an area set aside for ads, just as with many free computer games.
Something unexpected happened when I updated MalwareBytes yesterday to run their scan yet again: it installed a free 14 day trial of the paid version, even though I just run the free version. This time, when it ran the scan, it detected nothing amiss - again - but something surprising happened the next time I ran Magic Jigsaw Puzzle: it apparently detected - and blocked! - the false alert as coming from a website, as opposed to being on my computer. As soon as it did so, I was able to continue playing my game normally.
But when I play the game today, I get the same alerts I was getting before; once I get the alert, I can’t play the game any more so I just exit the game and start it again to resume playing. I don’t understand why the free trial of the paid version of the game stopped the fake alerts ONCE but not again given the free trial still has almost two weeks to run.
I’ve never seen malware that worked quite like this. I’m wondering if there is any way to stop this nonsense without using a different puzzle program?