Tech Support: Real and Otherwise

Sunday, September 21, 2014 Oddly enough, yesterday's storms went by, mostly south of Sauk Centre, with nary an interruption of power. This afternoon, with little but cloudiness happening, power went out in our house: and stayed that way for what felt like fifteen or 20 minutes.

We may or may not get good fall colors this year. One tree near the north end of Ash Street is, as usual, getting a head start on one of its branches: but otherwise we're still reasonably green around here.

Help with computers, legitimate and otherwise, is in the Sauk Center Herald. That "Police warn of a computer scam" is the old 'tech support' scam, where someone calls a computer owner, talks the person into giving the caller remote access to the computer, and then demands money to get it "fixed."

That happened to someone here in Sauk Centre on September 11, and apparently it's been done elsewhere in the area. The computer owner wouldn't pay, and ended up with a virus getting installed.

I've gotten calls like that, myself: not often, and not recently. Happily, I'd read about that sort of scam: and knew enough about Microsoft to realize that their tech support staff wouldn't be calling me.

Before getting to a new business in town, these Wikipedia pages do a pretty good job of talking about common sense and today's tech: Technical support scam; Ransomware; Virus hoax.


From the Sauk Centre Herald. September 21, 2014.

"How safe is your computer from hackers" tells about Sauk PC Repair, a new business that's in the old Hillcrest Hotel Building on South Main. The folks there do quite a bit besides virus removal: like upgrades, making custom computers, and repairing laptops.