Phone Call "You have a Virus"

I think the appropriate response to that call would be "I have a laptop?"

that or "oh, my (spouse) has it, here's his/her number (and this is why it's good to have the telephone number of the police department memorized)

A friend of mine got hit by this. She's a smart lady in general, but a little naive online--a latecomer to the online universe, so she's still learning.

This company's business model was to call the user and claim to detect possible virus activity on their computer, and they do activate remote access. Luckily, all they do is run a virus checker and then proclaim you virus free. They then sign you up for their "remote maintenance" service package.

Initial cost was about $120. Follow up in six months for only $80 for their "full protection service update".

She finally called me about it, asking if I thought it was a "good deal". I frankly freaked out that anyone had taken remote control of her machine (I'd set it up for her). I researched the company and found they were scum, but at least not known to put in trojans or steal data. They were scamming her, of course, but not stealing from her (except for the exorbitant fees).

She already had a virus checker/firewall from her ISP, so I had her do a system restore to the previous version (before her "service" was performed) and run a full scan. No problems. Cleaning up her various caches improved performance, as well as some junk she'd installed at startup (Why does everybody and their brother want to install crap at startup?) that was seriously eating up her CPU time.

Basically, all she needed was AVG (or Norton, or Symantec) and a quick check with Malwarebytes and Spybot S&D, and she was good to go.

I also suggested that the next time she feels like she might have a virus and she doesn't want to call me, she can always take it to any of the local reputable computer shops and pay a lot less for a system optimization. Even Best Buy or Staples is cheaper and more reliable than an anonymous voice on the phone. Heck, some will do the testing for free.

I can't remember the company's name, but it was based in England.

I've always used the free version of Avast. Never had a problem with the program and it's caught a number of nasties trying to get into my computers.

I use Avast too, both on my PC and my phone. I've used both Norton and McAfee (or how ever that's spelled) in the past, but they've never caught anything that the free version of Avast hasn't been able to catch just as well, so there's no way I'm ever paying for any of those again.

And you know that nothing has sneaked past your AV software because the very same AV software didn't report anything!?

Actually we got a call like that once on our campus flat, thought that was the uni's tech team one of our housemates was racking up an impressive up/down ratio due to a trojan.

I prefer f-secure as a virus protection, but avast is pretty decent too.

My SIL got one of these calls, and gullible as she is, she started talking to them, then got them off the line and wisely called my other SIL and me to report it. We checked her computer and it seems that all is well, so no malware got installed.

I hope to get the call. I'd love to mess with them and tell them I have Linux.

I did some remodeling in a local hotel. while I was working on the lobby, I had a bit of a conversation with the desk clerk, where they had a parrot behind the desk. she told me that one day, while she was cleaning the lobby, she heard the phone ring and someone take a reservation. when she looked around the corner, there was nobody there but the parrot - who, quite obviously, couldn't reach the phone.