Lisa Hendrickson is the owner of Call That Girl. She is an Outlook Expert and Microsoft 365 Consultant.
This weeks blog is a warning to all of my readers of a virus and spyware phone call scam that is going around and this is real folks, not fake. No need to check with snopes.com. I am going to ask after reading this, you DO forward this blog link to your friends/family/college kids, etc. Anyone who has a computer and has a phone.
Here is the situation.
One of my networking colleagues calls me a few days ago to tell me that she got a call from someone (named Mark, with an accent appearing to be from India) who said she was sending out “spyware” and they needed to remote in and do a check on her computer. They also said they charged $129. They also said they were representing “Windows Microsoft”.
I called their number on their website to check them out as asked a few questions. They told me that they call people with viruses that are Windows Microsoft owners to alert them, it was very fishy. They also said that once the client agrees to the service, they will not give back refunds. It appeared to be a smaller call center by the sounds in the back and when I asked for a supervisor, the first guy on the phone said, “She wants to talk to a supervisor” and hands over the phone to the supervisor.
First thing folks, no one should ever call you about computer issues but maybe your internet provider or your friends with these following reasons:
Now, moving on…
My networking colleagues moves on to tell me that this company started installing programs and while she watched them work, she took very good notes on what they did. One thing though that happened that caused me a lot of concern was that they talked her into doing things that she said she wasn’t sure she should do, such as log into her bank account to pay them (basically, so they could see her account number) and I’m quite sure they put in a keylogger program (to get her password).
After 2 hours, she wasn’t comfortable with the call, their service and the whole thing so she reported it to her bank to file a discrepancy. She told the company she was going to do it and they said she would see a credit on her account, but she didn’t feel comfortable yet again with that.
Unfortunately, she got scammed. But this is getting more common as I did some research on the internet. Trust me, no one from Microsoft is going to be calling you about anything, PERIOD. They simply do not call you unless you ask them for help with your computer. And you will know that because you contacted them first.
Here are a few things to watch for:
As I hate to say that it’s the “people from India” doing this, this is the current scam and I am just playing virus advocate to help spread the word on what’s going on.
Interested in having us do your hardware repairs? Call others first and get quotes or save yourself and be sure you get the most affordable, fast turnaround repairs by Calling That Girl! Our St. Louis Park location offers friendly service and knowledable technicians.
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Blue screens of death repair
5871 Cedar Lake Rd. #214
St. Louis Park, MN 55416
612-865-4475
So you get the “blue screen” or “blue screen of death”…what do you do now?
If you call someone, you may get this answer, “It’s your hard drive”
Or is it…???
I’ve troubleshooted many of these errors. Sometimes simple troubleshooting is all you need to do. Sometimes it’s a bad Windows update or a software glitch that caused the blue screen to happen. Sometimes it is your hard drive. Somtimes it’s hard to tell unless you bring it in our shop.
Two calls this week in the shop proved that it was a Windows problem and we quickly resolved it by doing some magic in the shop, cost to the client? An easy $40 fix. Didn’t take much more than 30 minutes for us to repair it.
Here are a few tips for you to try yourself at home before bringing it into our shop.
If it blue screens, it’s more than likely your mouse or USB port (wireless mice and keyboards can also cause a blue screen). If the end of your mouse has a circular end, it’s probably not the issue. If it has a 1/2″ thin metal end, it’s a USB mouse and could be the issue. Try another mouse if you have one.
If your computer turns on fine again, then test your USB plug-ins. (camera, webcam, printer, etc) If then all seems ok, go in and back up your information/data right away.
Again….if anything at this point fails, it could be a hard drive or a software issue. I don’t always think it’s a bad drive if it blue screens. Sometimes your computer just has a bump in the road and needs to be “reset”. The troubleshooting tricks above often help figure out what may be causing the issue.
If you have any questions, feel free to contact us at 612-865-4475 or contact us with the form below
Hello 2011!! Call That Girl is all staffed up and ready to head into this exciting new year! To celebrate the growth we are experiencing, why not share the joy with one of our computer cleaning sales!
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A computer cleaning is great if you:
Rules:
The computer cleaning includes:
Our computer cleanings usually take an hour, but may go longer than that due to upgrades and scans. We have changed our billing for all computer cleanings to be a flat fee, no more hourly billing.
Feel free to forward this email to any of your friends and family.
Today I got a call from a client that caught some scareware that really did scare her, and her computer to the point it almost crashed her computer. Almost. She called That Girl and we got her back up and running.
What happened? She was on the internet and just surfing around, like most of you do on Sunday mornings. She clicked on something she was going to look at and next thing she knew, she had downloaded something and it brought up a window stating she had to buy a removal program for X amount of dollars.
This folks, is scareware, but can have a back end of malware. Malware is malicious software (mal-ware). If she had started to click on the program and try to close it down, it would have downloaded malware and started to cause chaos in her computer. And unfortunately, this client did click on the pictures enough and lost access to the internet.
Sometimes, it’s worse than this! Many times it causes your windows to crash and you can’t boot your computer up normally. 9 times out of 10, if you Call That Girl, we can walk you through getting your computer up again and run some scanner tools to remove the scareware, malware and spyware that was downloaded into your system.
We are also big believers in using great protection, not AVG 2011, Norton, McAfee, Trend, WebRoot, etc. Scareware, Malware and spyware get right through this big box programs (Norton is the worst at catching it!!!) We are firm believers in buying the real time protection (Malwarebytes) of the program that we use to clean up your scareware, malware and spyware!
If you are reading and want to make sure you have protection that works, read these instructions for downloading, installing and configuring Malwarebytes. It’s one of our favorites and we are resellers of this product.
https://callthatgirl.biz/malwarebytes-installation-and-configuration
If this is too much for you to understand, please fill out the form below to schedule some time for us to help you, we can also remove your other programs (that usually don’t work!) and get you a refund if you have recently purchased Norton. They have an awesome refund page!
Call That Girl is also now supporting SuperAntiSpyware moving ahead in 2011. Watch for details!
