Driving to get lunch I get a call from a friend who tends to usually call when he’s run into some type of computer “issue”. Sure enough he’s got a technical question, and the first words out of his mouth make me groan…
“Yeah I got an email from Microsoft, and they say my machine is compromised, and sent me to some site that wants me to pay $40 for some software to fix it”.
Oh dear lord, he’s already clicked a link in the message which means he has probably already downloaded some form of malware on his machine.
So I begin to explain in layman’s terms that this is a scam, do not click the link, do not buy the software, delete the email.
The next thing he says is “so should I run this full scan thing that they sent me to?”
Suddenly it’s clear to me all over again why spam continues to be on the rise, and I’m reminded why I have a job and why that job is not supporting the average end user.
History & Physical Exam Pocketcard
Like not supporting the average end user makes much difference. One of my cow irkers last week (who shall remain nameless coff coff Bart coff) Was trying to log into a web appliance we jointly maintain. He cant get in and asked me. “Hey, you know what my password is?” I reply “Don’t you know??” He then says “No, its cached”
I leave it to your imagination how the rest of us reacted to that bit of stupidity.
July 6, 2007 @ 3:26 pm