For me, and probably most of you, articles like this are “business as usual.” Nothing too alarming here. I often search for these types of stories since my company, Flagship Solutions Group, provides security and business continuity products and services. By sharing the information on social media, I hope to educate our customers and partners on the latest trends and threats in the marketplace. Rarely do I ever have the opportunity to experience them firsthand, like I did today.
It wasn’t more than 5 minutes after reading and posting the article that I got this screen. (See below.)
It popped up when i was trying to access Google Sheets and was accompanied by a loud buzzing alarm sound. I was unable to close the message or go to any other window within Chrome. The screen says that my “system has detected possible suspicious activity.” and then it says to “call the toll-free number below for a Microsoft-Certified technician” to help me “resolve the issue.”
It continues with a scare tactic, “For your safety… (blah blah blah),” and then tries to interject some urgency via all caps stating, “PLEASE DO NOT SHUT DOWN OR RESTART THE COMPUTER. DOING THAT MAY LEAD TO DATA LOSS AND POSSIBLE FAILURE OF THE OPERATING SYSTEM AND POTENTIAL NON BOOTABLE SITUATION RESULTING IN COMPLETE DATA LOSS…” (notice run-on sentence and questionable grammar)
The first thing I did was turn the volume down on my laptop – that noise was a bit much.
Next, I called our company Tech Support Rep, Norman Enriquez, who quickly said, “I know what this is.” (Music to my ears)
He knew exactly what to do and told me to click the box that said, “Prevent this page from creating additional dialogs.” Then he told me to click “OK.”
That was it! Easy fix. Phew!
After that, I was able to close the window and continue to use my PC normally.
What I got out of this experience:
- Educated users are smart users. I was lucky to have just read that article just before this happened.
- Always call your trusted Tech Support line rather than a toll free number that pops up on your screen.
- Sometimes the fix is as simple as 2 clicks, but the mistake of doing the wrong thing can be much more complicated and expensive (reference the above article for more information). Call Tech Support before you do anything.
- Even though some of these “bad guys” were caught and an article was written about them, there will always be more to pick up right where they left off.
If your organization is in need of trustworthy Technical Support resources, schedule a consultation with Flagship. We partner with IBM to provide world-class multivendor support for organizations of all sizes.
You can also view our latest infographic: How to Find the Right Vendor for Technical Support Services
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