Phishing by Phone

Last night Kathryn Allen posted a rather interesting story about an attempt at phone-based scareware. I’ve been dealing a lot with scareware on the job(s) the last couple of years. This is the kind of stuff that pops up as you’re visiting a website and tells you that your computer has 323 viruses found or something. And you click it and it downloads what looks like a real virus scanner, and shows you all these viruses and malware and such. And you can get rid of them, but only if you pay them $29.99…

Kathryn actually got a phone call from a guy named “Ben” who told her he was from Microsoft and they were proactively trying to help out with error messages that had been reported to Microsoft.

Which, itself should be a red flag for anyone because, typically, you have to tell Windows to send any error reports. And, typically, it tells you in the dialogue box that it won’t send any personal information, so how exactly does Microsoft know to call you…? Well, of course, they don’t. So, as Kat says, if you get a call from Ben or one of his ilk, tell him to take a hike.

Mirrored from Bum Scoop.

Day 14 of 30 Days of TV Shows

Day 14 – Favorite male character

This is a pretty tough one, since I don’t get into favorite characters, even more than I don’t get into heavy show fanaticism. Which might make a few of these questions a little boring, but what the hell. And there’s a lot of candidates from shows I’ve already mentioned: Brisco County Jr., Jack O’Neill, Daniel Jackson, Teal’c, Mulder, Jethro Gibbs, Danger Mouse…

But I think I’ll go with Alexander Scott, as played by Bill Cosby, in the old TV series I Spy. He was a very cool character, especially for his times, when I’m not sure there was such a thing as a black spy in that genre, much less one of many languages and Harvard educated and such. I always thought that was a rather nice touch to a character that, from my perspective, didn’t seem all that groundbreaking, but for 1965 must have been.

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Mirrored from Bum Scoop.