‘HOW I WAS SCAMMED . . . ’

‘I feel so violated’

When Tracey’s (not her real name) phone rang while she was making dinner last week, she was not in the mood for a chat.

“As soon as I heard the accent, my gut reaction was to immediately hang up.”

She now wishes she had and can’t believe this happened to her. Tracey was scammed.

“I feel so violated. I remember reading about people and thinking how could they be so stupid. He caught me at a vulnerable moment,” she says.

The man introduced himself and said he was from Windows Microsoft and they were working on behalf of her internet provider. He said there were problems with her computer and he would show her how to fix them.

“I initially questioned him on how he got my number — he had an answer for everything and had me thinking he was the real deal within the first 10 seconds.” Tracey says she could hear call centre type noises in the background.

“That’s what had me convinced.”

He reiterated a few times during the course of their conversation that he was only there to show her how to fix the errors, that he didn’t want any money and that it would only take five or 10 minutes. None of this was true.

“Every time I would question how long it would take, he’d come back real polite. I asked him a couple of times if it was a scam. We had recently had fibre installed in our street and had had a few problems since — it seemed uncanny and all added up.”

The scammer had Tracey click on a few different things on her screen to highlight the ‘problems’.

“Errors kept coming up. I’ve since researched this and now know they are normal errors we all have.”

Another 15 minutes into it, Tracey once again asked him how much longer it would take and he convinced her another five minutes. He then said he’d now show her how to fix all the errors that had shown up and told her to bring up Google and type in something.

“That took me to a site called Team Viewer. By now I wanted the problem fixed and I was wanting him to hang up.”

Tracey followed a few more instructions before the screen went completely black.

“It came up with a firewall and something else. I could no longer move my mouse. I was still convinced until I saw some dollar amounts come up.”

Tracey says she questioned him some more and not long after that her husband arrived home. She told him what had happened. “Then the penny dropped.” She shut the computer down and rang police who told her to ring their bank and Netsafe. She was put through to an answer machine and was asked to email them with her scam. She was also advised to ring her internet service provider.

“That’s when it sunk in and I burst into tears.”

Although Tracey doesn’t use internet banking and is not on Facebook, she is worried any past purchases online might make her vulnerable. But the biggest thing for her is her photos.

“He gets to see them all. It’s a total violation of my private stuff. I thought I was pretty savvy. I want people to be aware that scammers are out there and not to get complacent.”