I had a phone call this morning which was obviously from a spammer. A female voice said that my internet would be disconnected in four hours time due to a faulty router. She said I should press one to be connected to my internet service provider’s technical support line who would fix the problem for me.
I wasn’t busy and I thought that I if I kept them occupied for a while at least they wouldn’t be using the time to con someone else.
So I pressed one. I was connected to a guy who went through all sorts of technobabble to tell me that my router was faulty and that he needed to access my computer to fix the problem.
I said that this was very worrying, I’m 75 years old (I’m not) and that my son (I only have daughters) had given me a computer about six months ago, rambling on about how he worked in a local bank and was very successful, and of course about how they don’t make things to be as durable as in the old days and how the computer was so important to me with the COVID-19 restrictions as I couldn’t get to the bank or supermarket so I relied on on-line banking and on line shopping to survive.
I could almost imagine the pound signs lighting up in his eyes.
Before I could use the computer of course I had to find my glasses and they were upstairs as I’d been reading in bed last night. More rambling on about how my eyes aren’t as good as they used to be. It’s amazing how much time you can kill by talking about any old rubbish that springs to mind.
I then killed several more minutes as I noisily climbed the stairs with heavy footsteps and lots of laboured breathing, plus comments about how I wished I had a stair lift.
Then I spent several minutes noisily rummaging around in a drawer before “finding” my glasses followed by a long noisy walk downstairs to the computer.
I “switched” my computer on (in reality a desk fan) and waited ages for it to “boot up” making comments about how it was an old computer and how it was slow to “give itself the boot”.
Then of course I had to put in the password – Three attempts at very slowly hitting keys on my keyboard before admitting that I couldn’t remember it.
Of course I said that the password is written on a piece of paper stuck to the fridge, so more heavy footsteps and laboured breathing as I slowly went to the kitchen and back to get the password.
When I got back I was obviously very out of breath and I complained that I hadn’t done so much walking for ages wasn’t feeling well. I commented that I wasn’t as active since my heart attack. (building up the image of some frail elderly man who wasn’t very healthy).
Then more slow typing and eventually my phantom computer let me in.
He then asked me to go to a website to download a remote access programme so that he could control my computer to fix the “problem” with my router.
I started typing something but then said that I really don’t feel well, groaned, let out an ARRRGGGHHH! sound and made a lot of noise as I supposedly fell off my chair and onto the ground. Then silence.
The guy didn’t seem to know what to do. He kept saying are you all right and then eventually hung up.
Maybe I’m cruel letting him think he’d killed someone, but I’d kept him hanging on for the best part of half an hour which meant that he wasn’t conning vulnerable people into letting him have access to their computers and bank details.
