I actually take the 3AM Call
Miss J called the other night at the crack of dawn. It was the crack of dawn where she was not where I was.
Me: Hi there Miss J ... Good Morning!
Miss J: I was just leaving you a message why did you pick up the phone?
Me: Don't I always pick up when you call? That's what friends do.
Miss J: Listen ... I was playing a facebook game and when I clicked on this thing and my computer blew up! The browser won't work anymore and It's scaning viruses and ...
Me: I'm putting my head back down on the pillow now. I'll call in a while and we can fix it togeather. Don't go paying for anything those jackasses are selling.
Imagine this senario.
You head off to work and an XYZ construction company truck and crew pull up to your house. They spend the day removing the roof of your house that you just had replaced in May. When you arrive home from work the project manager approches and explains "I know what the problem is!" ... You need a new roof! As you try to explain I already had a new roof ... It doesn't matter anymore because you realize you don't have any roof at all right NOW. Further your new roof has to be purchased from XYZ construction otherwise you're not getting a roof. Is this not criminal? Yes it is.
These bogus antivirus marketeers are playing you. They disable everything so you cant use the computer at all. Then the bad guys actually write a program that looks like it's going to help you with viruses. You download it, install it and you've just volunteered to be a criminal yourself on behalf of the hacker because now they have control of your computer. It becomes a zombie spewing spam mail and it costs you $89.00 to boot.
I've seen this several times before with the boys watching their youtube videos and such.This one was not too serious. Miss J and I were able to roll the system registry back to the day prior to the infection and everything seems to be working nicely. To this day Miss J is the only person with the guts to call me at 3AM.
I always counsel my girls to never ever buy anything that pops up on the screen offering to "fix" your virus-plagued computer. They know how to restore to a previous time and that usually solves it. I myself am devoted to my iMac because (knock on wood) they are immune to viruses. But when I had to get a Windows-based laptop for work, the anxiety began again. So far so good. Geek Squad on speed dial.
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