[knz]

> It's a losing battle at this point. Your time is better spent educating them against social engineering attacks (I'm still afraid my mom is going to return a call to the voicemail the "IRS" left)

The "This is Microsoft calling..." scams are even worse. Many older people have very little understanding of what is actually installed on their computer and what the various pieces do. My mother in law has fallen for the fake AV popup advert multiple times this year.

[ben_jones]

To go into detail, you'll get a call from "Microsoft", generally with a foreign accent, and they'll have you sit at your computer, screen share, and give them root access. Then they'll do some powershell command that makes scary messages flash on the screen and have you buy whatever plan in order for them to "clean" it. Usually a couple hundred bucks.

My deeper fear is that they rooted my dad's machine and have been up to nefarious stuff ever since, but i'll never know. He won't let me touch it.

Oh and the IRS is now contracting private debt collectors, so there may now be "legitimate" calls regarding the IRS....