“That went pretty smoothly,” my classmate said after arranging an interview for our journalism class.
“Even though it’s Friday, the 13th,” I added jokingly.
“Don’t say that. I don’t have the time for bad luck,” he replied.
Well, I hope I didn’t jinx it for him too, because my day was about to change.
Oh, happy day!
“Hello, this is Windows Technical Support calling!” I heard a male, South-East-Asian accented voice saying as I picked up the phone and rolled my eyes. I thought it’s just another of those advertisement calls. I was about to hang up the phone when he continued, “You have some serious problems with your computer. It’s sending us a lot of messages. It appears to be a big problem.”
There it was, alarm bell number one. But my exhausted student brain didn’t notice it. I went on to get ready for writing my Aquinian articles half-listening to what he continued to tell me.
“Yes, lots of big problems. We at the headquarters of Windows receive a lot of messages that your computer is sending to us. They are from the Internet.”
As we did have some problems with our internet connections due to the thunderstorm that rolled over Fredericton the last two nights, I thought maybe that was the reason he called. However, this problem had been fixed the day before. Where was alarm bell number two?
Soon, I was sitting in front of my laptop following the instructions he gave me. He made me press some buttons and type in a few codes. A window popped up; apparently it showed all the failed downloads and many more viruses. The number shown was over 10,000 items. I was impressed.
He continued asking me to type in codes. I ended up on a website, www.ammyy.com, where I was supposed to download a program that, as I saw later, makes it possible to “share a remote desktop or control a server over the Internet.”
Alarm bell number three was shrieking with blinking lights, but I didn’t hang up the phone. Instead, I turned on my voice recorder next to my laptop and started to take notes.
“Mam,” as he kept calling me throughout our 25 minute long conversation, “you are now successfully connected to our Window’s headquarter with a master computer.”
So, you’re in my computer now?
I imagined a giant room with lots of people judging from the background noises. Looking back, I’m both relieved and disturbed that I wasn’t the only one who got scammed.
When I asked him where the headquarter was, he replied, “We’re located in San Diego, California, Mam.” I joked about that he had nice weather there. No sign of humour on his part.
“Your computer is running slow, Mam,” I agreed with him and hoped he would fix that. He made another long list appear on the screen he was controlling now from whatever place he was.
“A lot of viruses are sent to your computer. Look at this, Mam. Oh my God, just look at this. How badly corrupted it is. Lots of warning, warning, warning, error, error, error.”
At this point, I wasn’t thinking about my stories anymore. I was intrigued. Had my computer really been infected by weird viruses that got installed without my knowing?
“On the top page, you can see, Mam – oh my God! Just look at this!”
The number got bigger: 57,111. He asked me what virus protection program I was using. He asked how many computers we have, if I use my computer a lot and if I knew anything about computers. Naive like Little Red Riding Hood, I answered all his questions. In the meantime, he probably searched through my files to see if anything was useful.
Before handing me over to the Head Technician, he told me:
“Do you know that some hackers hack your computer without your knowing? You know that, Mam? They’re using your computer without your knowledge or permission. They’re using [it] for bad crime.”
Oh, this irony.
“We’ll give you the best security, Mam.”
Alarm bells were ringing my ears and now my gut feeling poked me, but I ignored both and asked how “Agent Leon”, the Head Technician, was doing.
“I’m doing fine, thank you for your wonderful inquiry.”
Leon told me the main problem was that my Windows software had expired. He said it would take “not one, not two, not three, but four hours.” In the meantime, I could “sit back and relax with my family.”
With the help of NotePad, he jotted down his name, Leon, his ID number 9038, the helpline’s phone number 1-209-436-9644, my service code and the email address, [email protected].
My gut feeling was banging its head against the wall after reading that email address.
“So what do you do? Are you retired?” he asked me. “How old are you?”
While waiting for whatever, I asked how many people worked there. He said 7000 agents and laughed, probably seeing himself stuffing his piggy bank with fresh dollar notes.
Getting to business, he wanted to know if I liked to protect my computers for a lifetime. The screen showed a cheap looking website, onlinepccure, for a virus protection with 99.9 per cent customer satisfaction and typos in the comments.
He clicked on the premium packet for only $309.80. Then, I finally woke up.
“I’m not sure if I want to buy that now,” I said.
“But it’s mandatory, Mam.”
Suddenly, politeness went out the window. I kept insisting that I wanted to think about it. I guess a simple “no” or just hanging up the phone would have been sufficient.
“You’re not buying anything, you’re just renewing the software. You will not be charged, okay?”
He ignored my question about who would pay for it then.
“Do you want to fix it? You tell me, yes or no?”
A few minutes later, he told me I could hang up. I didn’t. I waited for him to end the call, before I called the police.
Just say “No, thank you” and hang up
I told the Fredericton Police Department what had happened to me. They said there’s nothing they can do about it.
Scammers are creative making their calls. The police officer I talked to mentioned another scam call promising won air miles or lottery prizes.
Scammers change their number right after you hang up the phone. So when you call the number back you learn it’s not in service. The main goal of the scammers is to sell those programs and to get your credit card or other personal information.
Scammers often use public phone books to call people. They claim to be from “Windows Service Center”, “Microsoft Support” or “Microsoft Research and Development Team.”
According to microsoft.com, “Neither Microsoft nor our partners make unsolicited phone calls (also known as cold calls) to charge you for computer security or software fixes.”
In a case where you gave them access or personal information, change all your passwords and make sure you don’t have malicious software installed. Best is to say “No, thank you” and hang up.
That’s definitely what I will do the next time. I learned from my mistake and hope you did too, don’t answer the phone on Friday the 13th.
