Don't panic when your computer wails

Recently, I was about to start a fraud prevention presentation when my mom called to tell me she was having some computer issues. I drove over to her place. Upon arrival, her computer had a pop-up on the screen that made her computer inoperable. The pop-up was making a siren noise with a voice telling her not to shut down the computer. My mom did everything right. She closed the door to her office and called her “phone a friend” which happens to be me.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
This program is designed to provide general information with regards
to the subject matters covered. This information is given with
the understanding that neither the hosts, guests, sponsors, or station
are engaged in rendering any specific and personal medical, financial, legal, counseling,
professional service, or any advice. You should seek the services

(00:23):
of competent professionals before applying or trying any suggested ideas.
Understand the information contained in this podcast is intended for
informational purposes only and is not a substitute for individual
professional legal advice. The podcast information was carefully compiled from
vetted sources and references. However, Rose Resources outreach to safeguard

(00:45):
the elderly cannot guarantee that you will not fall victim
to a scam. Let's talk about scams. It's the must
listen show for anyone who wants to protect themselves and
their loved ones from scams. Every Tuesday, eight am Pacific
time on K four HD Radio, Joyce Petrowski, founder of Rose,

(01:05):
and her guests will provide valuable insights and practical tips
on how to recognize and protect yourself from scams. And
now here is your host, Joyce Petrowski.

Speaker 2 (01:19):
Good Morning, everybody. My name is Brian Watson. I am
a community outreach specialist for Rose. I have the pleasure
of filling in for Joyce Petrowski this morning. Welcome to
Let's talk about scams. Today's topic. The title today is
don't panic when your computer wails, And I'm going to

(01:42):
tell a story about something scary that happened to my mom.
But spoiler alert, there was a happy ending and it
ends well. Too many times in the scam prevention world
we hear all kinds of bad stories, and you know,
they're learning lessons and we don't shame anybody. Today's lesson

(02:03):
had a positive ending because it involved my mom and
she did everything right. So let's focus on something positive today.
So let me tell you the story. Last year, I
was about to start a fraud prevention presentation and my

(02:24):
phone rings. So I'm at a retirement community, I have
my computer setup. I'm going to tell the residents about
how to protect themselves from being scammed. In my phone rings,
it's my mom and she says, you know, she's having
computer issues. Someone's taken over her computer. It's not working.

(02:45):
And I said, Mom, okay, thanks for calling, but I'm
about five minutes from starting. Let me finish this presentation,
and I promise I'll get right back to you. So
the presentation ended, I get in my car, call my
mom and she's telling me more. She said, someone's taken
over her computer. She can't operate it. It's making these noises.

(03:10):
And I'm like, wow, this is even worse than I thought.
So I jetted over to her house. It was, you know,
forty five minutes away, and I went directly to her house.
I walked into her apartment and there is a noise
coming from her office, a siren like. It was scary.

(03:32):
And I sit in front of her laptop or her computer,
and there was a pop up on the screen and
it was scary. It made noises and said there was
a voice, a male's voice, that said, do not shut
down this computer. You will lose all your files. And
I tried to use her mouse and the mouse was inoperable,

(03:54):
and this whole thing was loud. I mean, it was
absolutely scary. So one, I'm going to have you pull
up the first slide. Here's the pop up that was
on the screen. I took a picture of it, and
it indicated that her computer was at risk from spyware
and that there were infected files, and then there was

(04:17):
a phone number on there for Apple support to fix
the issue. So let me, I mean, I can attest
this siren. And the male's voice was very ominous and scary.
Even though I knew this was a scam, I still
felt rushed. I felt like, you know, I needed to
resolve this quickly. And this is what I do for

(04:39):
a living. And you know, as I use Windows, that's
the kind of I use Window space computers. I know
that I can always on my keyboard do a control
alt delete. That way you get to the task manager
and you can close out unwanted program her applications. So

(05:01):
that's the first thing that came to my mind, because
when I tried to click the little X on the screen,
it was not working. These pop ups are very devious. Okay, well,
in this case, my mother owns a Mac. So what
I did is I pulled out my cell phone, had
my smartphone in my hand, and I just opened up

(05:24):
a search engine and I said, how do you do
a control delete? But do it for a Mac? And
sure enough, the Google machine helped me out and I
realized I could do something called an option command escape
on her Mac and I did that, and it gave

(05:44):
me the option of shutting down this pop up, and
then the noise was gone and it was peaceful in
her house or in her apartment. And so the pop
up disappeared from the screen and the noise of that
nasty siren stopped. It was a scam, but they wanted

(06:05):
to trick her into thinking she had viruses on her
computer and she had to resolve it immediately, and the
only way to do it was to call that phone
number on the screen. So let me just tell you this,
My mom did everything right. She didn't panic when that

(06:26):
nasty noise was coming from her office. She closed the
door of the office, and she called her phone a
friend and we all Joyce and I always talk about
Phona friends, and in this case, her phone a friend
was me, her son. And I was so proud of
my mom for not falling for this scam. You know,
if she called that number provided by the scammers, she

(06:51):
could have been scammed in a whole variety of ways.
You know. The most common way is they would have
requested remote access to a computer to fix it. Because
when you call these numbers, they're very nice. They sound professional.
They sound like they're Apple, but they're not Apple, and

(07:12):
they would have asked for remote access. Now they don't
call it remote access. They just say this is how
we fix these these issues. But when you get the
remote access, it can result in malware, which is short
for malicious software. They could do ransomware, they could commit

(07:33):
identity theft where they steal your personal information, or in
a lot of these cases, they'll ask for a fee
to fix things, so they'll ask you to send funds
via a prepaid card that you would buy at the store.
They might ask for a wire transfer, or they may
even ask for cryptocurrency. So always remember with something like this,

(07:57):
whether it's a pop up on your screen or a
phone call, or an email or a text message, never
call the number provided by a scammer. I guarantee you
this number you're seeing on the screen here was a
scam number. And incidentally, I tried calling that number the
next day it was already disconnected, so they've already moved
on and changed that number. If you do call that number,

(08:21):
you were falling for their trap and it's it could
have had horrible consequences. So I was able to close
out that pop up using the option command escape. But
let's say you know it's kind of scary and you
didn't think about doing that and you couldn't figure it out.

(08:43):
What else could I have done? Well? I could have
just turned the computer off. I mean, the scary voice
on the computer said, don't turn the computer off. Well,
I could just turn the computer off and that thing
would have gone away. Or you could have I could
have sought the assistance of a computer security expert. You know,

(09:04):
that could be someone in your family. It could be
a friend, it could be you know, a local store
or contractor that you interact with. In my case, I
have a college aged son who is really good at computers.
And so the next slide I want to show you
I'm going to move forward is this picture of a

(09:24):
bee keeper. And the reason why I have the beekeeper
is there was a movie in January of twenty twenty
four called The Beekeeper with Jason Stathum, and it was
pretty intense. If you're a Jason Stathm fan, and as
a former law enforcement officer, I was a fan of
the vigilante justice in the movie. But to be very honest,

(09:48):
I was rooting for him because there were some bad guys,
and what did the bad guys do well? In the movie,
his friend who he was staying with and someone who
he took care of, and she took care of him.
She got scammed in a pop up scam and in
the movie it looks something like this. On her laptop.

(10:12):
She got this pop up that said warning your computer
may be infected, and it talked about scary things like
viruses and trojan horses and things like that, and it says,
you know to remove viruses called tech Support hotline now.
So in the movie The Beekeeper, Jason Statham's friend called

(10:33):
that number and they had an answer for everything, every
one of her concerns. They they had the right answer.
And that's what these scammers do. This isn't their first
time doing this. They honed their skills by victimizing people
and using what works and get better and better at
what they do. So in the movie The Beekeeper, she

(10:56):
agreed to allow them to fix her computer. She got
a little pop up on her screen which was part
of the remote access and in the movie they ended
up stealing two million dollars from a charity that she operated.
It was absolutely tragic. So if you ever get a
pop up like this. There's all kinds of variations. Do

(11:17):
not react to it. You have time, As Joyce and
I always say, time is your friend. Scammers want you
to move quickly. You do not have to. In the
summer of twenty twenty three, when when I first started
being part of the Rose team, I asked Joyce Petrowski,

(11:41):
our founder, you know, how do we measure success? You
know it's it's hard to prove a negative. You know,
how do we know that what we're doing even is
resonating with people, Whether all this time and energy and
money that we spend is actually working. And Joyce told
me this. She said, Brian, we succeed when someone follows

(12:03):
our advice and is not scammed. So in today's story,
my mom followed our advice and she was prevented from
being a victim. So that's a victory. I keep hearing
one horror story after another. When I do presentations, people
come up to me and tell me these stories all
the time, and it breaks my heart. I can only

(12:23):
say sorry so many times. There's not much else I
can do. We can report it to law enforcement, but
most of the time the money's gone. But in this
case with my mom, and that pop up. She did
the exact right thing. So it's a victory and we're
going to celebrate it. Good job, Mom. So next week,
on July twenty second, I'm gonna be talking about my

(12:46):
mom again. Hopefully you don't think I'm picking on my mom,
but she it was an Amazon scam. And the title
of next week is win in Doubt. Call your friend
and I'm going to tell another story that happened to
my mom. And this one also I had some a
good ending, but there's it could have gone bad. Please

(13:07):
go to Rosadvocacy dot org for more information. We have videos,
we have articles, we have links, we have it's just
full of great information. But the most important thing please
sign up for our free monthly email right on the
front page. All we need is your name and your
email address. Sign up your friends, families, neighbors. These are

(13:30):
great conversation starters. We want to share this information with
as many people that we can. And then also on
Tuesday mornings, we have a little short tip that comes out,
so we're getting constant information. Joyce and I and the
rest of the Rose team are always looking for the
latest information to share with our followers. So that's all

(13:53):
I have today. If you enjoyed today's podcast, today's show,
please share it, share the link. We want more and
more people to watch this no matter where they live
in the world, because scammers are everywhere. All Right, that's
all I have today, Thanks for watching. See you all
next week.

Speaker 1 (14:13):
Well that's all the knowledge for this episode. Tune in
every Tuesday at eight am Pacific time on KFOURHD Radio
at KFOURHD dot com as Joyce explores a variety of
knowledge so you have the power to make scam protection
your healthy habit. And until then, feel free to reach
out to Joyce and let's talk about scams.