Vent: My neighbor asked me to 'fix' his computer after he clicked a link in a text

This was about three months ago. He came over, laptop in hand, saying his screen was full of pop-ups. I asked what he did. He said he got a text from 'FedEx' about a package, clicked the link, and entered his address to 'check the status'. I told him that link was a scam, a classic phishing attempt. He just shrugged and said 'It looked real, the text had a tracking number and everything.' I had to walk him through running a malware scan, changing every password, and calling his bank. The worst part? He still gets texts like that and just deletes them now. Doesn't block the number, doesn't report it, nothing. How do you get through to someone who thinks it's just a minor annoyance?

3 comments

3 Comments

kevin_roberts412mo ago

Ever wonder why people don't take this stuff seriously? I used to be the same way, just clicking away without a second thought. What changed for me was seeing my dad almost lose a huge chunk of his retirement to one of these scams. It wasn't just pop-ups, it was real people trying to steal from him. That made it click for me that it's not an annoyance, it's someone actively trying to hurt you. Now I get furious at those texts. Some folks just won't get it until something bad actually happens to them, and that's the scary part.

stellat872mo ago

My friend's mom fell for one too, @kevin_roberts41. It's real.

sandraf845h ago

... yeah I think it's important to point out that it's not just "a scam" in a general sense, there's actually different types that work different ways. Some are the fake tech support ones where they call you pretending to be from Microsoft, others are the romance scams that drag on for months, and then there's the fake check scams that look super legit at first. A lot of people group them all together as "that thing old folks fall for" but they're really sophisticated operations with whole call centers and scripts and everything. You almost have to respect how organized they are, if it wasn't so awful for the people getting tricked.