Sunday, June 2, 2019

Scare Tactics

If any of you have been following me on social media, you'll know that I recently purchased a new laptop (my first). And you'll probably know I was having trouble getting both, WiFi (so I didn't have to be connected to anything), and my Gmail account into it, once I did. I still don't know how to fix my document issues, but this is beside the point.

So, I'd had the WiFi fixed, and got my email account (somehow I magically figured out to do a Gmail2 account), and I was happily looking at my weather map in the comfort of my living room chair, and I thought I'd look in on a local channel page. My husband was trying to get the weather in on our TV set, and failing, so I thought maybe I could pull up that channel's page and see it.

All of a sudden, out of my computer speakers came a voice, it was loud, and it was female with a British accent. Actually she sounded like a Lord Voldermort follower. She was telling me that some spy ware was stealing my identity, and I was to call them [and this was given as a directive as though the world would come to a terrible end--no I kid you not! Read on!!!]



This window had come up over whatever I had there, and the voice kept repeating these crazy things and all of a sudden MY COMPUTER was the culpret and was doing nasty deeds to other computers.

My husband was telling me to shut it off.

The British bitch was saying "IF YOU DON'T CALL THIS NUMBER, OR TURN OFF YOUR COMPUTER WE WILL SHUT YOUR COMPUTER DOWN!"

All of this terrified me. I'd only just dealt with the moron about getting WiFi (and he had no clue how to do it, even though he was paid to help me and I spent the better part of a morning wasting my time on it, when all I had to do was get a router!!!), and then dealing with trying to get my email account set up in it. Now THIS???



Now on top of the window upon which they've put this 888 phone number (should have been 666, but that's just me), another screen comes up, all the while, mind, this woman's voice is repeating the dire consiquences of their shutting down my computer. It's asking for a PASSWORD.

My husband is saying to me, "Don't do anything. Just shut it off."

Which is what I did. If only to shut the bitch up. I then walked into my room, and unplugged my Internet cord.


It was VERY OBVIOUS that THEY were the spies and if I were to comply to their demands, they would get everything from me.

A password? Are you shitting me?
Get real.
A younger person who has no clue to the horrors of the world, especially those unholy beings roaming the Internet called SCAMMERS and HACKERS, would probably have complied.

As a result of all this, I was upset by it all. A threat to shut my computer off was ridiculous. I knew they couldn't reach in and do that. I didn't hook Internet up until the next day, but not until I opened up my laptop, heard the woman's voice and closed all the windows on it. And it went away. It was gone! It's been six days since that happened and I haven't had any more repeats. I've supposedly got protection, but I guess it didn't block that thing, whatever it was.

I'm not sure where it came from, but it was like a boogyman (or woman), coming out of the dark at me. It scared the shit out of me. I almost didn't want to open my laptop up again. But I did. I either had a problem, or I didn't, since I didn't give heed to their directives, I reasoned they don't know who I am, nor can they connect to my computer. At least I hope not. I worried that somehow a virus had visited my computer, but I did not open my email at all. Wasn't even up. What I did was deleted the last thing I had up, just in case that was the problem.

So, if you hear a British woman saying nasty things about your computer, and they want you to call them, or give out your password DON'T DO IT!

1 comment:

  1. I've had the phone version of that, a hostile sounding message telling me the tax people were coming to have me arrested unless I called back immediately.

    ReplyDelete

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