Today was my first experience on having my Windows 10 PC appear to lock up. I was on Facebook, and clicked on an image to either go to a video or website for more info. And suddenly my screen was full of popups and warnings, and with even a audio warning me that I had obtained a ransomware named "Slocker". Even my task bar disappeared and would not show up. Pressing the Esc key, or the Windows key, or Ctrl+Esc did not work. It claimed my computer was locked up and gave a warning not to shutdown the computer or my computer could be badly harmed! I was told to call Microsoft at 1-844-923-9922. So, I got out my tablet and did some searching, and found out other people were having the problem. Most found out phone number was a scam with non-American sounding English asking for personal information. But, no real advise on what to do. Some said they rebooted their computer, and then it worked like normal, others said when they rebooted they still had the problem. Several were using the Chrome browser when it happened. So, I went back to my computer and tried this: Ctrl+Alt+Del and the window did open, so next I picked "Task Manager" from that. Then I looked at the running tasks and nothing unusual there, just my usual programs were listed. Okay, my my reasoning kicked in, this happened when I was using my browser, I was using Opera, but that is a sister to Chrome. So I selected the option in Task Manager to shutdown Opera. When I did, my computer screen was almost back to normal, but in my email program, some of the background became black. I tried reopening Opera, it did, but my tabs would not open. So, I closed it, and reopened and that second time the tabs opened normally. I found in Operas history that the tab that opened was mvw8mocew89chf.azureedge.net The domain name was azureedge.net that jammed up my computer! I went to Whois.com, and the domain name is registered to Microsoft! Would Microsoft lock up my browser using Opera to do so??? Why wouldn't Windows use Defender to do that??? So, what the heck is going on??? I rebooted my computer, added that domain name to Avast to block, and ran both my Avast and Malwarebytes software on the computer, and neither found any problems?
I searched for the phone number 844-923-9922 on google and two phone number searches, and none could tell me who uses that phone number, no records found. Anyway, my computer, seems like it is working okay. But I have no idea if it is using my IP or info I use to take my data by the ransomware it said that was being used. As all three of my safety programs did not have info on it! But, using Ctrl+Alt+Del, then in Task Manager, and closing the browser I was using at the time, got my computer back to working.
