What's on your Wednesday Menu?

I've gotten that message before. Fortunately, I know how to break out of it (it's really not locked - you CAN get out of it if you know how) - but their point is to make you think you're locked out so you call the number - which of course goes right to a scammer's desk. They ask personal questions because they're trying to get info about your accounts and passwords, since lots of people use pet names, family members' names, birthdates, etc as passwords (and you're right - a lot of people also use the same password on all of their accounts, too). And/or they say they're going to scan your hard drive to get rid of the virus (but of course they're really on there to look for info), and then some will try to sell you a security plan so "it won't happen again" (ha!) - and they'll ask for your credit card number to supposedly cover this plan, when they really just want the credit card info.

happened to my mother in law. We wondered why she just didn't call me since I used to work in IT - and in a university computer lab no less when we dealt with this kind of crap regularly, but, she said she didn't want to bother us. She was talked into subscribing to their "plan" (there was a monthly charge for this fake plan), but luckily there was something wrong with the credit card info she gave (can't remember what it was now - I think she accidentally transposed a couple of digits or something) - so they called her back a couple of hours later, but by then she'd already talked to us so she knew it was a scam. Whew. She dodged a bullet. They HAD scanned her hard drive (to "look for viruses"), but I uninstalled the files they put on there.

anyway, huge mess. I'm sorry you had to deal with it - and I'm sorry he got scammed. Seniors can be so trusting and it's awful that people take advantage of that.

well, there ARE some instances when you really can get locked out. Those "ransom" attacks. But in many of them, it's just a way to get you to call that number so "customer service" can fix it...

Yeah, he said the computer was completely "frozen" but I don't know if he really tried anything. What's unbelievable is that my dad used to work for the IT department at MIT! But scammers are good at what they do--if they were not good, they wouldn't exist. So I told him not to feel badly about it.