Stay Alert – Beware of Fake CAPTCHA Scams

You're probably familiar with CAPTCHA security challenges that enable websites to distinguish between humans and bots by asking visitors to type in characters or select the correct objects in an image.

But a sneaky scam is making the rounds again — fake CAPTCHA pages that trick you into running malicious code on your device by adding so-called "verification steps." These steps can include:

• Press Win + R (This opens the Run dialog box.)
• Press CTRL + V (This pastes the line from the clipboard into the text field.)
• Press Enter (This executes the code.)

The fake CAPTCHAs can be found on any ordinary website through ads accepted by the site or by other compromised content.

To protect yourself from malware threats, be cautious of suspicious CAPTCHA pages. If anything on the CAPTCHA page seems out of place or unusual, do not interact with it and close the window or browser tab immediately

Remember: Real CAPTCHAs will only want a simple click or for you to pick images.