This morning I received a suspicious-looking email purporting to be regarding my paypal account. I normally immediately remove those, but I'd been on paypal recently and I thought as long as I didn't click on anything in the email, it would be safe to simply open it. The minute I opened it, something looked like it started to download. I closed it as soon as I could and deleted it. I then started a quick Sophos scan, which didn't find anything.?
About one hour later, I was working on my google account settings (I wanted to remove the auto-reply suggestions for emails). Suddenly a huge warning thing came up on the screen, purporting to be from "Apple Defender." I closed it out as soon as possible so I don't remember the details, but there were multiple levels of screens, screens within screens, with big, red, warnings, including "Do not use or reboot your computer" and stuff about how it had been hacked (I don't remember the exact words). I really had no idea what to do about it besides just close the window. I then started a full (rather than basic) Sophos scan, which is still running.
I'm on a Macbook Pro running Sonoma 14.1.1 but not sure that's relevant. I'm about to see what I can find out about "Apple Defender" but meanwhile thought I'd ask here.?