Writing for Fun
April 2016
Vengeance? More like petty revenge - Jan Osborne
I happened to be at my parent’s house last night when my mother answered a call on her landline. My ears pricked up when I heard her say with a worried look on her face, ‘My computer’s infected?’ I knew immediately this was a scam call so I put a finger to pursed lips and gestured for her to give me the ‘phone, mouthing as I did so that I would deal with it.
I took the handset and, pretending to be my old father, apologised and said, in a worried and wavering voice, ‘Sorry, what’s this about viruses? Are you warning of one in particular? I don’t know how to deal with viruses. Can you help me?’
The caller said he was with Microsoft and that various error messages and other feedback from our computer indicated that we had a particularly nasty virus and some malware and that it was imperative I follow his step ¬by step instructions to clean it and all the other problems from our PC.
What he really meant was give him remote control to enable him to steal whatever info he could, persuade me to pay him for getting rid of the virus, install malware, turn it into a zombie, or whatever else he could do with this scam.
Now I hate scammers with a passion but I’m especially upset because in reality my mother is on her own and getting on in age and isn’t as sharp as she used to be and would have fallen for this had I not been there. In fact, she did fall for this exact same scam about a year ago. She had been conned out of £400 – the price of fixing her computer – and I had had to wipe the computer to free it from a virus. I had told her very plainly that no one will ever, ever call from Microsoft, about viruses or for that matter any other internet related issue. Unfortunately her memory isn’t so hot these days.
In a very thick Indian accent this guy tells me how bad the computer is with all its viruses and infections.
‘Oh no! Really, I have viruses? How can I fix it?’ I ask. He assures me he’ll walk me through the clean up process and I express my relief and gratitude.
‘Ok, sir. I need you to hold down the Windows key and the R key at the same time.’
‘Ok, I did that.’
‘Now what do you see?’
‘Nothing. My computer is off now.’
‘Sir, no, why is your computer off? You should see a menu. Please power the computer back on.’
I actually had turned it off so I would be able to make sure he heard the Windows log ¬on sound to make it convincing. Now, my Mum’s computer is old and so the startup time is not exactly fast. After a good while I tell him I’m back up and ready.
‘Ok, sir. Now look at the keyboard and find the Windows key and the ‘R’ key. Please hold these down at the same time. Now please tell me, sir, what do you see?’
‘Hmm. My computers turned off again. I held down the main Windows button and the ‘R’ key just like you told me and it turned off again. I’m sorry; I just don’t know what I’m doing wrong.’
He’s getting a little frustrated now but the beauty of the situation is that, to my way of thinking, this guy probably has to call hundreds of people before he’s got a sucker on the line as willing and eager as I am to remedy this particular computer problem. So I do this cycle a full four times, each time giving him more little hints that I think the ‘Windows Key’ is actually the power button. By the fourth time I thought for sure he would get it because I was calling it something like, ‘the main Windows power button on my Dell,’ but sadly he never did figure it out. He gives up on that and moves on to try something else.
‘Ok, sir, forget that, we will try something else.’ He goes on to explain that we’re going to do a boot up sequence where I have to press the F8 key while the computer is booting back up. Obviously, this could not have worked out better. The chance to continually miss hitting the F8 key in time has me silently screaming with delight. I assure him I’m ready to hit the key and restart the machine. I let it fully boot up and the Windows log in sounds again and say, ‘OK! It’s back on and I’m hitting the key now.’ He sighs with more frustration.
‘You have to do it while the computer is starting back up!’ he explains. So I apologize again and feign frustration myself while holding back my unfettered glee. The next round he is more careful to make sure I’m hitting the key during the boot¬ up sequence. So I’m punching away on the space bar key as loud as I can during the boot ¬up, and after a couple of minutes or so here comes that beautiful Windows start up sound again and he lets out an even louder, more frustrated sigh.
‘Sir. Did you hit the F8 key?’
Well I’ve gone this far, I think to myself, I may as well lay on another level of frustration by mishearing his English. ‘Yes, I was hitting the ‘S’ and ‘H’ keys the whole time! I don’t know what went wrong.’ Yep, that did it.
‘No, no, no, the F¬8 key. The F8 key. Sir, look at your keyboard. Do you see the F8 key?’
‘Oh . . . Oh . . . the F¬8 key,’ I say. ‘Yes I see. I’ll try again.’ We sit there waiting a few more minutes. I repeat the whole process, this time after the start ¬up sound I tell him I hit the ‘F’ and the ‘8’ keys but again nothing happened. Dear God. He’s fuming at this point but trying as hard as he can to hold it back.
Right then I heard my Mother call that dinner was ready. Normally I would have continued wasting this scammer’s time; if only to stop one other poor soul from being taken for a ride in the short space of time I was holding him up but I knew it would not be long before he rumbled he was being had or give up on the silly old duffer he was calling. I had enjoyed my small petty revenge against one of the many criminals that prey on the old and vulnerable. Later I would write on face book all that had happened in the hopes that I could save even one person being taken in; besides I was starving. Mum’s roast was not to be left to go cold.
‘I’m really sorry, I have to go to dinner now and I will have to fix it later.’ With that, after this 35 minute phone call, I just hung up.
Sitting at the table with a juicy mouthful of beef and gravy I was telling Mum that it was all a scam and that I was just wasting his time when the ‘phone rings. Mother jumps up and says, ‘I’ll get it.’ In the sweetest voice, Mum said, ‘I’m really very sorry but we are having family dinner at the moment and I have a rule that everyone has to sit down together.’ After a moment listening to his reply she hangs up and sits back down.
‘What’d he say,’ I ask.
Mother replies, ‘He said, ‘ʄƱ©ʞ your family dinner!’’