My phone rang a few minutes ago: “This is Microsoft calling.”
Someone’s trying to hack my computer, see, and if I don’t quick call this number and ask Microsoft to rescue me, the bad guys will get all my personal and financial information and then they’ll destroy all my files and my computer will be “obsolete.” I am sure that wasn’t the right word.
I didn’t believe it, so I hung up. I reckoned something bad would happen if I called the number that they gave me.
How many poor devils fall for this, and what does it cost them? The answers are not pleasant to imagine.
The scammers are refining their technique. No more getting a call from someone with a thick foreign accent telling you to send $5,000 worth of Target gift cards to some weird address in Peedlestan, which you’d better do in one big hurry if you want them to save you from a fate worse than death. Sure, a few people fell for that. But the new scam is better.
“Khello, this Vase Present Joe Biden is, i am calling becose kheep big crinimuls they are trying only to khack your computer and be your privet information stealing-stealing…” Really, they had to make that a little more convincing. And so they have.
What can I say? Hang up. Just hang up.
I get those fake “Microsoft” calls all the time. “We are getting error messages from your computer” is the most frequent one, followed by “We are detecting an attempt to hack your computer.” Sometimes I like to say, “I’ll pass this on, along with your phone number, to the Attorney General’s office,” and then I hang up.
Yes, I was getting a lot of this junk. It has been almost a month since they stopped, but boy, were they annoying.
Good advice, Lee. If someone purporting to be Tech Suuport, your bank or whatever tells you to click a web link or dial a certain phone number, don’t do it. Instead, look them up on your own and go through their published portals. Those phone numbers and/or links are probably bogus.
What I tell everyone I deal with is to simply STOP! Don’t let them get you to rush, because the rush can, and will, interfere with your judgment. That’s why scammers try to scare you. If you stop, then think it through it usually becomes obvious that they have not proven anything with regard to their identity. Caller ID is meaningless. It can be spoofed very easily.
That is why I like the shut-down button.
We screen our calls. If we don’t recognize the caller ID listing we don’t pick up. They can leave a message which most of them don’t. And most of the unwanted calls are from “Unavailable.”
Unfortunately, some fundraising callers (human or robot) are programmed to keep redialing until they get a non-voice-mail response, i.e., a live human being. Yesterday, I had the same creeps keep calling me every half-hour — six times! — until I finally answered, waited for them to start talking, and then hung up.
Join me in wondering what the dickens ever happened to “Do Not Call.”
Me too.
LOL. I always hang up after ‘Khello.” Maybe the Do Not Call list is now called Do Call, Please? English as a second language…