This Scam Wasn’t A Smashing Success… Or Was It?

One day, I am abruptly awoken in the dead hours of the morning by a repetitive smashing sound. I grab the nearest object that my half-awake brain thinks could be used as a weapon and seek out the sound… in my housemate’s room. I find him taking a hammer to his computer monitor, with his phone sitting on a “call ended” screen distressingly close to the chaos.

Now, my housemate is not a tech-illiterate guy, but he is a bit of a ditz. And, let’s be honest — everyone’s IQ is a bit lower than usual early in the morning, especially if we’re woken up earlier than normal. Once [Housemate] has calmed down enough, he explains that he was woken up by a call that followed a pattern I recognize.

Scammer: “Hello, this is Microsoft Tech Support. You have a virus on your—”

Housemate: “Jesus f***, are you kidding me?! Hold on—”

He proceeded to stumble out of bed, unplug his PC from the wall, and then grab his hammer. His sleep-deprived brain somehow came to the conclusion that “virus” meant “someone able to watch you through your computer”. Fortunately, that same sleep-deprived brain also came to the conclusion that “computer” meant “monitor”, which meant that he was attacking the part that did NOT contain any of the data. Even more fortunately, I’d barged into his room brandishing my hand vacuum before his brain had recovered enough to realize the tower was the important part of the computer.

I don’t normally sympathize with scammers, but I DO feel kind of bad for the guy who had to explain to his boss that he’d hung up on someone because there was a maniac destroying things into the microphone.