Last Updated on: 11th April 2025, 06:45 am
I’m not going to slag this woman too much for being taken in by the there is a problem with your computer, please contact support scam. I’ve had to bail a couple of nervous people out of that thing in my day. Thankfully they were smart enough to call me instead of the number on the screen and I was able to teach them how task manager works so that the browser would close and take the stupid message with it. But I can certainly understand why a person who knows nothing about technology might fall for something threatening like that and make the call. But once you hear what they want you to do and how much of it? Bro, get a clue!
Investigators say the woman received a message on her computer that claimed to be from Microsoft technical support.
They say she then proceeded to contact the number on the email and was instructed by a male on the telephone to purchase $15,000 in Apple gift cards in order to fix the problem.
Investigators say the woman went to three different businesses and purchased $5,000 worth of the gift cards from each business.They say she then provided the PIN number to the male on the phone.
$15,000! Who owns a home computer that costs $15,000!? And that’s just out of the box! Forget that as soon as you hook it up and turn it on, it immediately begins being worth less than that! Even my computer, with the specialized screen reader and OCR programs, doesn’t come close to $15,000! Carin and I bought two computers a few years back that didn’t cost nearly that much combined!
Here’s a little friendly advice from your pal Steve. Unless that computer has state secrets on it, if someone ever quotes you 15 grand for repairs, hang up on that person, walk out of his shop or even throw him out of your house with force if need be. Then go somewhere else and buy a new one. You’ll easily hack at least one 0 off your price tag, with no shifty running around town to clandestinely buy gift certificates like you’re in a shitty spy movie required.
Update: There’s a second major problem here, of course. Carin pointed it out once she was done being floored by the cost, a stage I apparently never reached. If the message is from *Microsoft*, why do you have to buy *Apple* gift cards to fix it?