September 24, 2013

I’d sat down for the evening’s writing when the phone rang.  It was a heavily accented Indian named Paul, who told me who he was and where he was from (I wasn’t listening) and then informed me that they had been receiving very strange signals from my computer, and who then led me through a series of operations revealing that my computer had been hacked and filled with spyware and malware and assorted plagues. He said there were 17,000 viruses. I saw what he said I was seeing, and I did know that the poor thing was slow and there were certain operations it would no longer do, and that it wouldn’t download renewals of security programs, etc. but I also had no particular reason to doubt that I was being scammed with my own fingers on the keys. But Paul seemed so confident, so certain that I would trust him, that I gave up saying, “how do I know you’re trustworthy?” and just went along with it, including the $700 fix. Paul took control of my screen and I saw him navigating his way through labyrinths within that I have never approached. Then I was ordered not to touch the computer again until this morning, an order which I obeyed. I have not checked, but, oddly, I do not expect to find my accounts emptied. Through the entire operation, I was about 49% convinced it was a bold and horrible scam to relieve me at least of $700. The protection is for seven years. I am at the age when part of the brain relaxes, realizing it could be dead by then and never have to bother again. The machine runs better than it has since the first, and I have not yet gone deeper than this page, so if there are surprises, I am innocent of them. In any case, what I had planned for creation last night went uncreated, in a day after a wasted weekend, in an evening after a moderately grueling day.