I got a call from our old friend Donovan tonight, who was having tremendous difficulty with his computer. It seems that out of the blue, a "Windows Antivirus XP 2010" pop up window appeared, and asked him for his credit card information to subscribe for protection. I think the term "protection" was intended in this case like the old mob "protection racket." Of course, being the astute and adroit person that he is, our friend dutifully entered his credit card info and hit submit. The program promptly killed his internet connection and "took over" his machine. So what did he do? Called me. I walked him through a few things and told him to call the credit card company, which he ended up doing, and then calling me back to tell me that he had indeed been billed $60 and that the credit card company had flagged his account because of it. I left him running a virus scan in safemode, but I'm sure I'll have to run an ad-aware or malwarebytes scan tomorrow--remotely, somehow as well.



I half expect the man to be caught up in one of those Nigerian email scams one of these days. Who just sends out their credit card info because some random popup asked for it? At least he had the insight to call me right away. Hopefully there won't be too much damage and I can figure it out remotely. I don't know how to make a trip out to Newport to help him in person (which might well be faster, even accounting for travel time.)