Malware Scam

I had a little segment all prepared, and my phone rang. It was the house phone, which I don't usually answer – just for the reason that follows.

A fellow, yes, I admit it, from India and with a very thick accent who identified himself as Jacob, told me that I was getting this phone call because the company that he worked for – a Microsoft company – was getting messages from my computer that I was spreading a malware. He told me to go to "Run" and enter "eventvwr," which is simply the event log. It keeps track of, well, events, like when a process runs, when there's a disk error, if there's a system crash, etc. There are thousands of them, potentially, in a given day.

He asked me to tell me what I saw more of, yellow triangles or red circles. I said triangles. That wasn't the answer he was hoping for, but he played along. “Oh, he said, that is very bad. Very bad.”

“M'am,” he went on, “Do you have any idea where these could be coming from?”

Well, I said, probably because I was editing video and having a lot of trouble with the program crashing. I can see that by the date and time.

Another bad answer.

vi

Did I see many red circles, he persisted.

Yep. I said.

Oh, that is very, very bad. M'am, those are very very malicious programs which are being downloaded by your computer without you knowing.

Oh, it's ok, I said, I have malware protection, virus protection and a hardware firewall. I'm all set.

Well no ma'm, these are very malicious...

Click.

It may be entertaining to play along, but seriously, these guys are aiming to get control of your computer (with your permission), make sure there are problems, and get you to sign up for a roughly $300 protection plan.

Don't get taken in. Jacob isn't his real name.