Loading…
10
Rant: guy in line at Micro Center said his kid's school laptop got hit with 'the Microsoft popup' and he paid $300 to fix it
I was waiting in line at the Micro Center in Cambridge two Saturdays ago and the guy behind me was on speakerphone with his brother, talking about how his daughter's school Chromebook got a popup saying Microsoft detected a virus and to call a number. He called it. They walked him through installing TeamViewer, and then charged him $300 on a gift card to clean it up. I wanted to say something so bad but I wasn't sure if it was rude to jump in. Here is the thing that got me though. His kid clicked that popup because the school gives them zero training on this stuff, and nobody at home knows it either. Real Microsoft will never call you, and they will never put a phone number in a popup. The fix for that thing is just closing the tab, or if it is bad enough, holding the power button for 10 seconds. No $300 needed. Has anyone here had luck teaching older family members or kids a simple rule for spotting this stuff? Like one sentence they actually remember when it pops up?
1 comments
Log in to join the discussion
Log In1 Comment
the_rose27d ago
Teaching one line is the right move but the line has to be dumb simple or it wont stick. I told my mom "if a screen tells you to call a number, its a scam, no exceptions" and she repeats it back to me now when she gets junk. The part most people miss is the popup itself isnt even the danger, its the phone call that comes after, so the rule should really be "never call a number that showed up on your screen." That covers the Microsoft popup, the Norton popup, the Amazon one, all of it, and it works for kids too since they dont have to judge if the popup looks real, they just dont dial. Also worth telling them the fake ones freeze your browser on purpose so you feel like you have to do something, closing the whole window works fine and nothing bad happens.
3