I get quite a few panicked phone calls from people telling me their hard drives are encrypted, or that viruses have been detected on their systems, or other very annoying pop-ups that spawn more as soon as you close them.
While they look scary, they are harmless (except for that annoying part).
They are javascript-powered, and they spawn multiple instances of Edge.
Here’s the good news: they are easy to kill.
Go to your start button (on Windows 10 or 11) and type in “notifications.” We’re looking for Notification & actions settings. There’s a slider entitled “Get notifications from apps and other senders.”
Turn it OFF.
And that’s it! You’ve just killed the pop-up monster.