I decided to start off the new year by playing a game with a scammer. I got this screen while I was on my way to look up something on the Ohio Department of Transportation website. It informed me that Google Chrome had detected some type of attempt to get into my bank accounts and that I immediately needed to call Microsoft support at the number given. Now I knew it was a load of hooey because genuine security error doesn’t tell you to call a number for Microsoft support. While this looks like an alert, it’s just a webpage with an add on it.
It does give you a hard time when you try to close it, so that can be frightening to some people. If you see an ad like this and it won’t shut down, just close the browser. You don’t have a security problem. It’s all a big, fat lie. But just for the hell of it, I decided to call these dirty liars and play along.
When I dialed the number, I got a message thanking me for calling the support hotline and asking me to press one for the next available agent. He introduced himself as Phil. As you might expect he had a pretty thick accent normally associated with India or Pakistan.
He tried to play the role of reassuring tech support agent and asked what I was doing when the error happened. I played the role of a confused retired lady who just wanted to get to the Ohio Department of Transportation website so I could see the traffic conditions in my area. He asked if I was at home or at my office.
Which he needed to know because the IT department at a business would likely block his scamming butt from taking over my computer. Then he had me tap the Windows key plus R to open registry edit. That’s when he proceeded with his plan to get me to download a program that would allow him access to my computer. That’s when I told him what a piece of garbage he was. It as fun.
Had I let Captain Scumbag into my PC, he might have done absolutely nothing and charged me for fixing it or he could have stolen all kinds of information from my PC. The point is, this is a big, fat scam. If you’ve perhaps fallen for it and paid them something, you need to get whatever they’ve installed on your computer off of it and contact your credit card company to cancel the charge.