Scam Ads - "Potential Risk of Unsecured Connection" - How to remove

You might encounter pop-up ads that say that they’ve detected a “Potential risk of unsecured connection” on your device. These ads might look serious, but it would be best for you to ignore them. They’re not security warnings, they’re ads for a VPN app.

These “Potential risk of unsecured connection” ads seek to scare people into installing an app. This app costs a few dollars per week, but it doesn’t do anything useful. It’s basically a scam.

“Potential risk of unsecured connection” ads in short:

Type of threat	Adware, scareware, scam.
Problems with the “Potential risk of unsecured connection” pop-ups	Deceptive ads try to scare people by lying, the apps promoted by the ads cost real money, even though they don’t do anything useful.
How the malicious ad works	The ads appear on infected or unsafe websites, the ads are disguised as security alerts.
How to avoid the “Potential risk of unsecured connection” ads	Block malicious sites with ad blockers and malicious site blockers, protect your devices with anti-malware tools (Malwarebytes, others).

Problems with the “Potential risk of unsecured connection” ads

“Potential risk of unsecured connection” ads promote unwanted apps

It’s a pretty common scam nowadays – scary, deceptive ads are shown to people to scare them into installing useless but expensive apps.

For example, the Your device is currently infected with a Trojan virus! ads are like that. Various Hacker is tracking you! and Hackers are watching you! ads, too.

These ads, as well as the “Potential risk of unsecured connection” pop-ups, are used to push potentially unwanted VPN apps. You might have heard about fleeceware apps (Fleeceware apps discovered on the iOS App Store). These are the kinds of apps that the “Potential risk of unsecured connection” ads promote.

These apps tend to have really good reviews. They might even promise free features. But if you read their Terms of Service, you soon see that the apps are really quite expensive.

The ads are very misleading

It starts with a pop-up in your browser.

Attention!
We have detected a potential risk of unsecured connection.
Tap OK and follow the instructions to protect your Apple devices.

Next, the pop-up says that “Browsing on your device is probably not protected” and that, if you fail to install the promoted app, “your privacy and banking information on your Apple device can be stolen by cybercriminals.” This ad even threatens that your data can be stolen by criminals!

This is just a lie. VPNs are good for accessing content that’s geographically restricted. They can’t protect you from spyware infections.

The “Potential risk of unsecured connection” ad is trying to say that it’ll encrypt your traffic and protect it from lurkers who could be spying on you. However, most modern websites already use encryption with HTTPS (your browser shows a little lock icon next to the site’s address). This already makes your traffic to and from that website secure from any prying eyes. Not even your ISP (internet service provider) knows what you do on the websites that you visit. No VPN is needed.

How to avoid the “Potential risk of unsecured connection” ads

Malicious sites and ads tend to show up on two sorts of websites:

• Sites that knowingly show intrusive, low-quality, dangerous ads. Pirating sites, file-hosting sites, and similar websites.
• Websites that are infected with malicious redirects. Old, abandoned sites, and small, outdated websites are vulnerable to such infections.

You could use ad blockers and malicious site blockers to avoid ads like “Potential risk of unsecured connection”.

At the time of writing, the “Potential risk of unsecured connection” ads are shown by the website Vpnsecurityalert.com. This site is flagged by a few anti-malware scanners, as you can see on this Virustotal.com page. So, some anti-malware apps could help you here.

In addition, anti-malware apps like Malwarebytes can help you by warning you if you’re about to install a suspicious or potentially unwanted application.

Finally, check your App Store subscriptions (Manage App Store purchases, subscriptions, settings, and restrictions) and cancel those that are unwanted.

Automatic Malware removal tools