I have received two phone calls from an Indian sounding voice who told me he was calling from Microsoft because my computer was sending out error messages to their server and he was happy to help me deal with this.

I wrote to my computer adviser, Graham Brennan, and this is a copy of his e-mail:

From: Graham Brennan
Sent: 25 July 2016 17:02
To: 'Marion Rayner'
Subject: RE: another call about error messages

Hi Marion,

You don’t need to worry, it is definitely a scam call. They cannot see into your computer and they cannot tell what’s going on with it. They don’t even know for certain that you have a Windows PC – it’s just pretty likely. They talk you through looking at your system event log which WILL show numerous errors (which is perfectly normal), then they will talk you through getting them connected to your computer. After that, one of two things will happen. Either, they will go about ‘cleaning’ your computer, after which they will charge you for what they have done (which is not much usually) at which point you have given them card details or access to your online banking; and/or, they will set a boot level password which will lock you out of your computer and the only way to unlock it is to pay their ransom to get the password.

Two weeks ago a lady in the village had to get me to clean her computer after exactly this type of call and she had £1200 taken out of her bank account. Do not engage with them, don’t even talk to them, just hang up. If a number comes up on your phone you can report it to Action Fraud either online or by phone.  Here’s the details...
http://www.actionfraud.police.uk/

Hope that helps.

Regards,

Graham