Wouldn’t Put It Past Them To Scam A Child

(I have a personal cell phone, which I am using to play a game while my four-year-old has a snack and uses her tablet. While playing my game, I see a call coming in and I answer it. Nearly right off I realize it’s a scam used before, but using a different system.)

Me: “Hello?”

Scammer: “Hello, this is [unintelligible name and heavy accent]. I’m calling to let you know your netbook has a security issue.”

Me: *thinking of the old Windows version of this scam* “Oh, no, that’s terrible!”

Scammer: “Yes, ma’am, you should check your netbook and make sure its security is running.”

Me: “Will do.” *gets out my WINDOWS laptop and boots it up, letting them hear the Window’s obvious boot-up noise* “What should I do?”

Scammer: “You need to open your security and see if it’s working.”

Me: *pretends to do that, while instead just clicking on the desktop* “Oh, no, it’s not! What do I do?”

Scammer: “Do you see the CTRL button and a button that has four squares on it? Press those two and R together, then let go.”

Me: *hits G, H, and T, doing nothing to my laptop* “A pop-up came up…”

Scammer: “Could you tell me what it says, ma’am?”

Me: “Yeah, it says, ‘Congrats! You are being scammed!’ You people aren’t bright, are you? That was WINDOWS you heard boot up. Not netbook.”

Scammer: *starts swearing*

Me: *puts the phone to daughter’s ear*

Daughter: “No, no, no, no, no! Bad! No!” *wagging finger at phone* “Bad! No! No, no, no!”

Me: *laughing* “Good girl.” *brings the phone back to my ear* “Might want to remove my number; I’ve got plenty of tricks up my sleeve.” *hangs up* “Hey, [Daughter]. Want some ice cream off for telling that bad man, ‘No, no, no’?”

Daughter: “Yeah!”

(Oh, well. Another scammer to mess with, I guess. I hate scammers.)