Yesterday my mom intuition pretty much saved the day.
You know that voice you have as a mom, the one that tells you when something’s up with one of your kids that needs your attention? I learned to listen to it long ago, even when it doesn’t seem to make any sense at first.
So right after I finished my lunch yesterday, I had this strong feeling I needed to go home. Everything I needed to do in the afternoon was on my laptop, so I packed up and headed back to the house to work, knowing that our Middle was home all day. It was an off-day for her – a day to do homework and handle her online coursework.
I walked in the door to impending disaster. Her laptop had been overtaken by the scam that’s been going around. Screen locked. Continuous audio loop of a dire warning that her computer was about to die a painful death if she didn’t do such and such. She was on the phone with a scammer masquerading as a Microsoft help desk guy, who was hard at work trying to convince her she needed to spend ridiculous amounts of money RIGHT THAT MINUTE to install the world’s best virus protection, blah blah blah.
She had the guy on speaker phone, so I could hear every word. It was crazy – I was telling her this was totally a scam, and the fake customer service rep was trying to argue with me and kept up the hard sell.
Middle was so distraught and confused she tried to argue with me as well, so I had to get tough. Raised voice and everything. “THIS IS ABSOLUTELY A SCAM AND WE ARE NOT PAYING THIS JERK $300 FOR THREE MONTHS OF A SUPPOSED ANTIVIRUS. HANG UP THE PHONE NOW!”
Holy cow.
She did finally hang up. We spent several minutes trying to get all the crap screens on her laptop closed so we could even shut the damned thing down. We’re cautiously optimistic that no permanent damage was done. It started up just fine and operated normally. Her father will spend this evening doing a thorough reaming on the device, a task that was overdue, anyway.
The moral of the story?
For Pete’s sake, listen to that little mom voice. You’ll be glad you did.
Mom Goes On 
Ever since my kids were little, I have always said a little prayer “keep my family safe today”. Mom intuition is a powerful tool and the little critters don’t even know it when they are trying to push the boundaries.
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You’re so right. There have been so many times that I just had to say “no” to a request because that’s what my gut told me – no solid reason. And every time that was the right thing to do.
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This exact thing happened to my parents 😦 My Dad was sucked in and my Mom arrived during the whole thing and she ended up getting sucked in too. She usually is pretty wise to scams. Sadly, my elderly parents lost enough money that they could have bought a brand new computer … made me feel so sad for them and MAD at the scammers!!!
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Oh my gosh. That’s terrible! It was really shocking to me that my perfectly intelligent daughter fell for this malwear. It was definitely designed to prey on peoples’ fears and lack of computer knowledge. I think we should all have signs on our computers and phones saying “NEVER fall for an unsolicited sales campaign.”
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We’ve certainly found that to be true with my mother-in-law. She gets sucked into that stuff over the phone all the time.
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Good catch! It’s so frustrating that people try to get away with that. They need to get a real job and leave people alone.
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Definitely! Sadly, I figure their nasty schemes must work pretty often, or they wouldn’t keep doing it.
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