An elderly woman called me recently all upset because she had just talked to Norton customer support in India. She had gotten a fake antivirus on her laptop after opening a link in an email. She had Norton antivirus on her laptop so she decided to call them in an effort to get help removing it.
She said she Indian man she spoke to asked her what was the most important thing on her computer. She told him she was most concerned about losing her family pictures. He told her that Norton had already protected her computer from thousands of viruses and that since this virus had slipped past her firewall and into her computer the hackers could quite possibly gain access to the pictures of her family. He told her if the hackers did gain access to the pictures, they could decide to use them on the Internet and alter how they look to make them look like something else.
She said he then told her it would cost $200.00 for them to remote into her computer to remove the virus. When she told him she didn’t have that much money, he became rude and pushy and tried harder to scare her into thinking that giving him $200.00 was her only option.
It’s bad enough that Norton, and other American corporations outsource American jobs, but to allow these people to use disgusting scare tactics to extort money from people is reprehensible.
We removed the virus and nothing on her computer was lost except for the Norton antivirus she no longer wanted on her PC.
