My Mum been scammed and now I have to sort it out.

[Qmouse]

Just had a phone call. Lucky she wanted to confirm with me before she gave her bank details out. I told her to unplug her laptop and tell the guy to piss off.

There was a popup saying there was a Virus and to call this number, and she did and they loaded a piece of software to fix the problem and surprisingly it did not work and made things worse Then they asked for some money to fix the problem and that's when I got the call.

That whats happens when an elderly parent has access to the internet.

So now I need to visit over the weekend and sort this shit out. I am assuming this is a wipe and start again job or would the software screw the bios as well or is there some software out there that will clean their shit off the laptop.

Brian

 

[Deleted account 211025001]

Your mum's now got the virus on her computer, pretty much fucked AFAIK.

My ol' man had the same done to him. He paid the £40 or whatever they wanted and they did actually remove the virus.

There was a piece on R4 about this the other day. They reckoned it a good earner for the crims 'cos one, the amount of money asked for was not great so people were likely to cough up and two, as word gets around that the virus is actually cleaned off your computer, again, people were more likely to cough up.

Andres

 

[Shep]

My dad fell for it a few years back, now I get a call a month from some kind fellow telling my I have a virus!! All get sent away now with a 'thank you for telling me i'll sort that out'
My dad was scammed for thousands through various ne'er-do-wells preying on him, there are some proper scum about!

 

[AberdeenAngus]

My ol' man had the same done to him. He paid the £40 or whatever they wanted and they did actually remove the virus.

Andres

They may have cleaned the visible bit out but I would suspect they could have left some nasty Trojan in there.
Have you given it a thorough clean since?

I'm glad my mum has no interest in computers.
After much nagging we've finally convinced her to check with one of the kids before replying to any 'prize winning letters' she gets.

 

[sagalout]

This is why old people should be given iPads - all my tech support duties were solved after I threw my dads old PC away and bought him an iPad with a wireless printer!

 

[Deleted account 211025001]

They may have cleaned the visible bit out but I would suspect they could have left some nasty Trojan in there.
Have you given it a thorough clean since?
...............

No, and good point

Andres

 

[Sleepy]

This is my Son, http://www.myitguy.uk/ it's what he does for a living.. give him a call he'll give you a bit of advice fi you can't sort it out.

 

[Lord Snooty]

I guess you won't know how badly infected it is until you get your hands on it. Hopefully you will be able to run whatever anti-virus software which might do the trick, if not you may have to take it to someone who has more powerful tools to sort it out. Best of luck.

 

[Deleted account 190920001]

Wipe it and start again. Seriously whether paid and they remove or not you will never know if it is clean. When you give someone access to a machine like that they could just about do anything including root kits and keylogers.
When you are done setup a second account for her that is a stock user account with no admin rights. All anybody can do after that is really just screw with her account and not the actual OS since she has no access as admin.

 

[shugie]

Try booting from an anti virus boot disk eg AVG, ESET etc and scan the whole disk, removing any vileness you may find.

 

[Evilsi]

wipe it and re-install, its not worth it. Ive just had the same with a mates old man, got a call from 'Microsoft' and they convinced him to give them remote access to his laptop. I forensically examined the disk and there was 2 Trojans and a key logger installed at the same time as the remote connections were active. He now has a honey pot which he gives them access to whenever they call him most days which gives me access to their network. anybody in Lahore who would like dolling out some retribution? i have phone recordings, webcam pictures, geo locations etc.. apparently this area is a little hot bed of scams like this.

 

[Qmouse]

I took the wipe and start again approach. I'd rather be safe than have to go through all this again.

I am still getting the odd "how do I do this again and this worked before" phone call where I am expected to know exactly what she is looking at without seeing the screen and what all the options are?

Elderly parents and computers But Hey-ho its in the son job description

 

[ianm00]

I took the wipe and start again approach. I'd rather be safe than have to go through all this again.

I am still getting the odd "how do I do this again and this worked before" phone call where I am expected to know exactly what she is looking at without seeing the screen and what all the options are?

Elderly parents and computers But Hey-ho its in the son job description

Try using teamviewer www.teamviewer.com. Its a brilliant program for remote control. Very easy to setup and use. You can then remotely control the computer and see the screen.

Ian