Scam Update

I still belong to an online marketing discussion group -- remember when those existed for every topic? Anyway, someone posted about some computer scams, and I replied with my "your computer has been hacked" phonecall scam. Someone else has just responded:

My 81 year old mother in law just fell for this scam. What they do is to leave a backdoor and a keystroke recorder on your computer. We caught them, hopefully, before they could do anything other than get a couple hundred dollars from her credit card. She had been having problems with her computer---my thought is that they got her with a trojan that gave her computer trouble, triggered it, and then called her. Now, the computer is not working...they may have left a timebomb so that when the backdoor was removed, it caused more problems. I have to go look at it tonight. Obviously the computer expert we hired wasn't so much.

I know there will be no justice for these people, but I sure wish there would be!


Update a few hours later:

Here's another response:

There’s a trick some of these crooks use to get you to install their stuff on your computer—and this will evade some anti-virus/malware programs.  (A Norton tech told me this a couple of years ago.)  Once you’re on their phony site, you’re presented with a pop-up that asks you if you want to install their program.  The choices are Yes and No, and there’s also an “X” in the upper right to close the thing.  The problem is that, no matter which of the choices you pick, you’re indicating “Yes,” and the anti-virus program reads it as you giving permission to install the program.   

The only way to safely close the dialogue is to use the old ALT-F4 key combination (in Windows). 

I have a friend who thinks these hackers should be executed when caught.  I used to think that was a bit drastic, but I’m coming around to his POV.