Defeated By The Dinosaur
One day, I get a scam call that many people will be quite familiar with, and I decide to have a little fun with it.
Scammer: “Hello, this is [Scammer] from Microsoft Tech Support. I am calling about your Windows computer. Our system shows there is a virus on it.”
Me: “Really? Wow, I’m kind of impressed.”
Scammer: “Sir, this is very serious.”
Me: “No kidding. I haven’t had this thing on for three hours at a time. What do you need me to do?”
Scammer: “Well, turn it on, obviously.”
Me: “Sure thing, just a sec.”
I hit the power button, sit back, and pull up something on my tablet. After a few minutes…
Scammer: “Sir, have you turned your computer on?”
Me: “I have, but it’s still booting.”
Scammer: “…What? How?”
The answer to that question is why I decided to enjoy this. I have a decrepit old Windows desktop that belonged to my grandfather and was in the house when I moved in. There’s a text editor called “Lotus Word Pro” that I hadn’t even HEARD of before I turned this dinosaur on. It happened to be the only Windows device in the house at the time I received this call.
It took a solid ten minutes for this ancient beast to even reach a screen where it would acknowledge any inputs. When the scammer needed me to input a certain URL to let him remote in, I revealed to him that this prehistoric thing wasn’t connected to the Internet (being as it predated Wi-Fi), and I couldn’t connect it to the Internet with any sort of fastness.
Scammer: *Sounding genuinely baffled* “Why do you even have a computer that old?”
Me: “Because some s***heads just want to watch the world burn, so I like to dump them in an empty void that doesn’t have any worlds in it in the first place.”
This is my genuine reason; there exist products that look like USB devices but will auto-install malware or even fry your computer’s hardware when plugged in. If I ever get a device from someone I don’t trust, I plug it into the dino first to see if something hellish happens to it.
But the scammer clearly took that as an insult toward him personally; he issued a quick “f*** you” and hung up.
