Strange pop-up for Malwarebytes Privacy VPN 7-day free trial -- is it legit?

VPN
1

I got a lower-right pop-up (in Win10), declaring, verbatim:

    Try it all.  Free.  Malwarebytes Privacy

 7-day free trial of a secure and fast VPN to protect

      your privacy online. (Windows/Mac)

Above the first line of text is a symbol/logo, three different balls of different shades of blue in a triangle formation, connected by lines.

The odd thing is, the window style is like old Win95 style, very blocky, and with an “X” close-window click spot in the upper right, but also a smaller X in a small black box in the upper left. Of the two, only the right-corner X changes to the hand cursor when I hover over it. There’s also, after the 3 lines of text above, a “Start Trial” button in the lower left - the cursor changes when hovering over that one also.

When I right-click on the MB tray icon, it offers options for quitting or hiding Malwarebytes, but not opening the main MB interface window, suggesting it considers it open already, which it isn’t.

I didn’t notice this pop-up until just now, it was under other application windows, but it happened sometime in the last 12-14 hours or so. I also realize now that today I never got the weekly scan completion pop-up notice from MB that I usually do on Sundays.

Is this a legit pop-up? And if so, why doesn’t it have the usual MB logo and standard-looking window controls? I’m afraid to click to close, in case it’s malware and that click initiates something.

The fact the MB tray thinks MB is open, makes me think it’s this window that it’s considering open, which would mean it’s legit, and I need to close it to proceed to the main interface window? And maybe I never got my scan report today because it’s waiting on me to respond to the pop-up before it proceeds? And maybe the odd appearance is just a formatting glitch? I hope all that is true, but it still seems odd, and want to know what the safest next move is.

Any insights at all very much appreciated!

2

I got that pop up two days ago, they pushing hard their VPN campaign and it does not disappear by itself one must closed it manually which is annoying. Not a good thing while working on something important and have that kind of distraction for premium users.

3

Did it look like this? https://i.imgur.com/RU7buPA.png

If so, this is a legit notification from Malwarebytes

4

Did it look as I described it, with the odd 3-ball triangle logo and the boxy old-style window controls?

5

Similar… except your graphic has no close box in the upper right, and the formatting of mine is all off? My window has a wide blue band above what you show, with a white X close box in upper right, and a smaller white x in upper left (within a black box) that appears to do nothing. Looking at your version, it looks like there’s no option but to “Start Trial”?

Also, the “Start Trial” button isn’t centered in the window like yours is, it’s in the lower left… and the words aren’t even centered within the button frame, they’re along the bottom of it.

Not sure how to easily add a screen grab to this post, but I included one in my support request on your site, if you have access to that.

As another poster said here, it looks like spoofed malware itself! So, since that’s not resolved, I have to wonder if it’s made to look similar to fool the unwary.

Malwarebytes needs to seriously rethink their methods… enough with pop-ups, they scream “I’m malware”… all communication should be through the application interface. To notify the user, flash a modified alert icon where the usual MB icon is in the system tray. This is a no-brainer. Then let everyone know that Malwarebytes will never invite you to click on a random pop-up that appears.

Please, can you follow up on this and either a) Find out why mine (and apparently for others, above) looks this way, or b) Confirm that there’s no way it could be yours, and it’s an impostor looking for me to click on it? And then, c) make sure there’s no way this could ever happen again?

Thanks for the response, but I hope to get some resolution of this too.

6

How do you make it stop? I don’t tolerate advertising on my PC. This would be a make or break on whether I buy the premium service (on trial currently). If I have to periodically dismiss a popup, that’s a no go.

7

Yeah, mine didn’t even display correctly on one of my machines. It looked like some decade old spyware when it popped up. Not a fan of people using a program I’m paying for to pimp an unrelated service. But Malwarebytes has always been top notch for me, so I’m not going to whine too much as long as it’s once and done.

8

Can you PM me your ticket number? That way I can use your screenshot from there to help explain this issue fully. I believe this is a known issue due to some graphic settings, so I wouldn’t be concerned about that, but I have relayed your feedback to our PMs

9

Thanks for confirming I’m not the only one. And you’re sure it was popped up by the legit MB application, right?

They should know better than to use pop-ups, period, because malware authors have a huge incentive to try to mimic being MB itself.

All communication, even if it’s an offer like this, should happen through the program interface. If there’s a new message they want to deliver through that, have an animated flag or something that appears on the MB tray icon, to indicate the users needs to open the application window to see. This isn’t rocket science. And test everything relentlessly before release, so it doesn’t look like malware itself.

10

Done, you have mail. And thanks.

11

Thanks for the ticket, I’ve looked it up and this does seem to be related to an issue we’ve been seeing. The notification is legitimate.

That being said, is there any chance you can grab the logs mentioned below so we can try to understand why this is happening on your machine? Thanks!

  • Use the Malwarebytes Support Tool to generate the necessary log file. This log file will contain information about your Malwarebytes product and some information about your computer as well.
  • Upload the log file to wetransfer.com and generate a download link for the file.
  • PM me the link to the log file.