The telephone calls from ‘Genuine Microsoft Technical Support Agents’ continue though the number has reduced from 4 to 5 calls a day, there must be a finite number of scammers and I am sure the same one never calls me twice.
I help the situation by reporting each one as a malicious call, it feels good that, after they have done their bit of being a nuisance and me giving them a run around its a final poke in the eye from me.
One Asian sounding lady recently wanted me to stop what I was doing and clear my screen. I had just been editing video and was transfering the files to my storage disc, I had lots of software assigned file names which meant not a lot to me, “OK” I said “I have a file here AG3486572 can I close that”? that had her confused, “oh well I will close it, now I have AG3486573, can I close that one?” I just continued what I was doing, transfering them one at a time over my Wifi network from the machine they were on to the big storage drive.
Occasionally I told her I had accidentally put AG3486577 etc. in the recycle bin “what can I do now”? again she was cofused.
“Have you now cleared you screen” she would say. “No there are still these files open, now I have AG3486612 can I close that”?
Finally she asked how long I thought it would be before I was finished. “Oh let me see, weeks I think”.
“What” she said “Can you clear your screen now, otherwise we won’t be able to cure your problem with your computer”. “I haven’t got a problem” I said “You told me I have got a problem”.
“In which case” she said “I am going to terminate this call”. “Fine” I said “you called me I didn’t call you”.
The latest call was another Asian sounding guy, at tea time, my wife handed me the phone,
“Hello sir this is the Microsoft support centre”
“I am using my computer now” I said “it seems to be working fine”.
“Sir your computer is reporting a problem, a rogue file has been downloaded when you were browsing”.
“Oh, I have been browsing”.
“Yes sir your Anti Virus program has allowed a rogue file to enter you computer”
“That’s bad, I have Microsoft Anti Virus”
“No sir you have Microsoft Operating system we are the Microsoft support centre”
“Yes and I have Microsoft ant virus”
“No sir your anti virus will be Norton, AVG, or Kaspersky, something like that”
“No I have got Microsoft Security Essentials installed”
I was looking forward to a nice long argument here.
“Sir you know nothing about computers, I am not going to talk to you”.
The blighter put the phone down on me. Wouldn’t you think that the Microsoft official support centre staff would have known that they now have Anti Virus software.
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