TURN OFF YOUR COMPUTER

It’s a good idea to turn off the computer every Now and Zen just to remember what the real world looks like, but its also one of the ways you can save yourself from one of these phishing virus scams.

A loved one saw this warning on his laptop last week and ended up calling the scam number and giving him his credit card and installing software on his laptop for them to access his files.

Its easy to do.  I actually clicked on something in my Facebook newsfeed this morning and it brought up this same FAKE Microsoft scam.  You can see below, it launched a new tab and the URL looks like some kind of Windows DIRECTORY.  But .online, is actually a domain name.  The tab also FROZE all of my other tabs open and I could not close the Chrome window with the red X.  I couldn’t even close the app from the bottom app ribbon.

I used ALT-TAB to move away from Chrome and opened Task Manager and killed my web browser that way.  But you could just as easily press the OFF BUTTON on your computer and it will close all of your applications — including this phishing scam.  Just remember if you do that to NOT RELOAD all of the open tabs when Chrome starts up again.

Above all, don’t be embarrassed to call one of your grandkids 😉 or a friend who seems tech savvy.  You aren’t a bad person or stupid in any way shape or form if this has happened to you.  These hackers rely on feeding off of your fears and they create very real looking scams that even well seasoned computer people may on occasion fall into their trap.

When all else fails … ALT – CTRL – DEL.

TURN OFF YOUR COMPUTER.