Cleaningupdate.xyz Uses Fake Virus Warnings to Push Ads

Cleaningupdate dot xyz is a misleading website that uses fake, scary messages to push ads to visitors' browsers.

When you land on the page at Cleaningupdate dot xyz, you will likely be faced with either a blank page, if you are in a location that the site isn't targeting, or with several images styled to look like Windows and antivirus software message boxes.

All of those boxes will contain scary but also very fake statements. Those can include being infected with a number of viruses, having visited malicious websites and the like. All of this is fake, and the website has no way to know this information about your system. The biggest tell-tale sign that all of this is a fraud is the message that claims that "if you leave this site your computer will remain damaged and vulnerable".

Those are all simple but effective social engineering scare tactics. The plan is to scare the visitor into submission and get them to click the "allow" button displayed by the browser in its default "allow notifications" dialog box.

Doing this will give the page permission to spam your browser with intrusive and potentially harmful ads. Similar misleading websites often work with rogue ad networks. This means that they may deliver ads that link to unsafe pages, malicious sites and questionable content.

All of this is easily avoided if you simply close your browser immediately when you land on a page that is full of virus warnings and claims your computer is infected.