I spent an enjoyable weekend with family celebrating the marriage of my nephew and his lovely bride in Michigan. When I returned home, there were two identical messages waiting for me on my answering machine. In a way, I always appreciate it when tech scammers call me, because it gives me a lot of material for articles. And I also know that I have the ability to stop them from taking advantage of people. 

The message opened with “This is Officer James Williams, and this is a final notice from cyber-security headquarters of Windows operating system.”

Okay, that sounds a little scary. It’s one of those things that might get a bit of a panic response going. This is what scammers count on.

The message continues: “We are blocking your computer’s IP address permanently because we are receiving continuous errors and warning reports from your computer from last week.”

They’re hoping to call someone who has actually been having some computer problems who might be tricked into thinking that this scammer somehow knows about it.

Then the caller says, “But before we block, we would like to verbally investigate and ask you if you have done this intentionally or not. Call department back at 1-800-208-0186.”

The scammer then says that the issue is time sensitive. “Before legal actions are taken, report back.”

This is pushing all kinds of buttons at once, like the panic of losing the use of your computer and the fear of some type of legal action. The number that they give you is actually an answering service that’s used for all different kinds of scams. If you were to call these creeps back, they would no doubt ask either for credit card information in order to fix the problem or access to your PC, where they could do who-knows-what to your system.

The number one rule to remember here is that Microsoft will NEVER just call you out of the blue to talk about your PC problems. Second, Microsoft doesn’t have the authority to take legal action against you because your computer is having problems. From a technical standpoint, nothing they say makes any sense.

This is a big fat scam. Do not respond to it. Make sure you warn all your friends about it, as well.

~ Cyn
Courtesy of Cyn’s Tech Tips