In this day and age, more and more people are online.  The internet is a strange and wonderful place filled with all the information one could ever want to know.  Banks have made banking at home simple with online and mobile banking.  The world is our oyster!

To quote Uncle Ben from Spider-Man, “With great power comes great responsibility.”  Having and doing everything online also creates a risk.  There are people in the world who do not have your best interests at heart and will do anything to scam you out of your personal information or your money.  In an online world, scams, hacks, and general no goodness is becoming rampant.  What can we do to stop it?

We must remain vigilant and knowledgeable.  One of the more recent scams going around the internet is a hacker claiming to be a representative from Microsoft.  Their preferred means of scamming comes in two fold.  One of the two ways they try to get you is by calling your phone and telling you that you have a virus on your computer that needs to be fixed immediately.  The second way is that, while surfing the internet, you will receive a “Windows Error Message” that tells you to call a number immediately.  Both of these are from scammers wanting to get money from you.  They will ask to get on your computer and look around.  They will do some manipulating and make your computer appear as though something is amiss, even though nothing was wrong before.

We, the end user, must be aware!  A legitimate  Microsoft message will not have a contact phone number and Microsoft will not call you and tell you about problems on your machine.  In this case, big brother is not watching.

So the moral of this article is this:  Don’t let anyone on your computer, or mobile device that you do not know or trust because they do not have your best interest at heart.