This might be a timely thread with a timely warning. There is a major scam going around, and despite him being one of the most intelligent men I've ever known, Ken fell for it. He was working on his computer one morning as we were preparing to go to Sessions in a couple of days, which is a state wide meeting for all York Rite bodies. As the Grand Secretary, Grand Recorder for Chapter and Council in the state, he has a lot of data bases on his computer and takes it with him, sets it up on the secretary's station up front, and then has everything he needs right at his fingertips. Well, this particular morning he had some last minute updates to do when suddenly a message came up on his screen from Microsoft, saying the some kind of risky thing was detected. If it had said, Click here to resolve, he'd have just shut his computer down, waited, then gone back on without clicking anything. But this message gave a toll free number for him to call. When he called it, the party answering said, "Microsoft Tech Support, how may I direct your call?" Sounded pretty official. So he tells the lady what he saw, and she rattled off some number and told Ken that was probably it and she'd transfer him to Mike, who could help him clear the error message. Bear in mind that we are both pretty new to this Windows 10 stuff, and it does lots of things we'd never encountered before, so he figured it was a protection feature built in to the computer. This scam operates one of two ways - either the computer message like Ken got, or a phone call.
Then my brilliant, college educated, retired Naval Officer proceeded to authorize "Microsoft" to remotely access his computer to "fix" the errors - after paying them $160.00 for the privilege. DUH< KEN!! He went to work on his other computer while they "fixed" his, as his old computer has his back up stuff on it. A couple of hours later I got home with Kendra and was putting things away when he came strolling into the kitchen. I asked him if he was all done already and he told me that he wasn't, that Microsoft had detected a threat and were right now accessing his computer remotely to repair it. I just started at him for a minute, then ran into his office...sure enough, the cursor on his computer was wandering all over. I ran back out, jumped on my iPad, and looked it up. Scam, BIG TIME! I showed him what I found, but also found out that this thing is so sophisticated that if you realize it's a scam before they're done, they totally shut down your entire system. You can't do a darn thing. They can also access your other computers via your network, so mine and his old one got shut down post haste! He just stood there looking at me like it was all my fault! I'm afraid I wasn't very nice back. I just glared at him and yelled, "Do you SERIOUSLY think Microsoft CARES if you have a computer issue? He(( no, they just want to sell computers and software so if yours breaks down they aren't gonna politely let you know and offer to help!"
So here we are, relatively intelligent, articulate adults looking at each other without being able to say a word. I got back on my iPad and did some more research. According to what we read, any attempts to suddenly shut down were more dangerous. So we had to let it play out for the next half hour, biting our nails and shooting each other dirty looks the whole time, until he got a message that said his computer was finished, and he should turn it off, then restart it. I'd called our computer repair company in the meantime, who told us to bring it and his back up computer right in. So we shut it off, took it in to Mountain View Computers, and Mark was able to get it cleaned out. But we lost all of our files...everything... which would have been a total catastrophy if Ken hadn't a full back up on his other computer. Since Win10 was new to us, and his was a new computer, he had been backing up as he finished any little changes just in case we had some trouble with the new operating system. While Mark worked on "The Beast", we ran over to the bank and changed everything - every account we had, and Ken's credit card. Fortunately there is no personal information about the members - just names and when they joined. All of their financial stuff is in the Treasurer's hands and it's all paper, not computer. Ken also stopped the payment to "Microsoft", and that was successful. We came home and both of us had to change every password to every site we visit, every store we shop at....it took most of the night. The next day he had to reload some of his software and all of his files.
Last week I was on the web doing some research for a column for the paper when I got the same message. I called him in and said, "Watch this." I reached up, shut my computer down, and waited a few minutes before turning it back on. He just shook his head....."I know, I know!", so the lesson sank in.
This is a real scam, and because you are the one who calls the number, it seems perfectly legit. But don't fall for it. You won't even be able to close the page you're on when it pops up. Just reach up for the button and shut down shut down shut down! Ken isn't a dummy. And he was humiliated that he fell for it. But like Mark at the computer repair center told him, "You aren't the first." But he wants to be the last so he tells people what he did. Mark also said that the phone call aspect was older, but the pop up is relatively new. We have two antivirus programs on each computer and it got by both of them. So be careful!
