Fake Adobe Update

[Dublin70]

Don't know if this is where this should be posted but did want to alert people to the fake Adobe update popup that i encountered on my desktop this morning. 

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/ie/forum/ie11-windows_7/warning-fake-adobe-flash-update/24cacd2e-b6f8-4fd8-948b-68a42ec6e8fd?auth=1

I ignored it fortunately. Should MB3 have alerted me to this possible malware - or is it malware? Or some other kind of nasty? Thanks.

[exile360]

Greetings,

While more often than not these are just PUPs (Potentially Unwanted Programs, usually in the form of bundled installers or adware plugins), they are occasionally malware/malicious.  We do our best to block the ones hosting actual malware and while we do block many of the ones hosting PUPs as well, sometimes we do miss some, but that said, our detection rates against the actual PUP installers is excellent so even if you'd have downloaded whatever they were pushing, Malwarebytes most likely would have detected it, either as malware if it was malicious or as PUP if it was the typical adware/bundled installer most of these are serving up.

In addition to fake Flash, there are also often fake Java updates, fake video codecs (they claim you require a plugin/codec update to watch a video/view a website, which isn't at all true), or browser add-ons, most of which are some form of adware/browser search 'enhancer' that actually just shows you the sponsored results of their affiliates who are paying them.

I do hope this helps to both inform you and set your mind at ease a little.  If there is anything else we might do to help please let us know, and also, if you happen to have the URL of the fake Flash update please feel free to post it in a new thread here and our Research team will take a look and add it to our block list if it is malicious or meets our criteria for blocking scam sites.