In a day and age where the internet is used for everything from entertainment to professional employment, almost everyone in the world has access to the internet, and while that in itself is not a problem, the problem lies in people who are not so literate in technology, specifically the older generations, which is understandable because they did not grow up with it like we did.
However this creates a pretty massive issue, because through this tech literates can take advantage of people who are not literate in tech, and that is bad because, essentially, they are exploiting someone who doesn't know what they are doing but you know what they are doing because that is where their robbery lies in.
Now, you may ask, who are these "tech literates who rob people?" and the answer to that is, scammers, I'm sure most of you already know what scammers are and what they do but for those that don't, let me explain.
Basically, they take advantage of the tech illiterate people by tricking them into buying various fake software.
Online Scammers come in many forms, but the most common one is fake pop-up alerts, in these, scammers set up a website which gives a fake alert saying something such as "Your computer is affected with a virus, please contact this number immediately" and then they'll give you a number.
These pop-ups are all fake, your computer is not affected with a virus and is working just fine, if it were to be actually affected with a virus, it wouldn't alert you in a web browser, instead it would alert you through its antivirus software.
But some people who are tech illiterates might believe the pop-up to be real, and call the number given, and that is where the scammers real work starts.
First of all, you need to know what is a real Microsoft number and which ones are not, Microsoft has a list of numbers you can call to reach its customer support, which can be found here:
You can find your country's customer service number from the link above, where you can contact Microsoft's support team.
But anyway, in the scammer's calls, they usually just show you something that may seem wrong but is actually completely fine, then they'll ask you to buy a software in order to get rid of it, and that is basically how their scam works.
Now you may think, who on earth would fall for these? well a lot of people do, everyday hundreds of people get scammed out of their money and it is saddening. That is why so many social media influencers, specifically tech youtubers have tried to bring attention to this dangerous corner of the internet. Jim Browning, to mention a few.
The best way to avoid this, in my opinion is to be careful of what sites you visit, if you are visiting a pretty shady site, you might be faced with these pop-ups, and a big step is to ALWAYS make sure that the sites you are visiting have that little lock icon in the address bar. Otherwise it might be dangerous. The icon indicates whether a website is secure, that it is encrypted and the ownership of the website is valid. And any information you enter into the website will be encrypted.
But anyway, that is it and I'll see you guys next time, Bye.
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