This is from Computerworld Shark Tank, which I read daily. These are funny stories about computer users from an IT perspective. Normally I have not shared these funny stories with my readers because this is a bit of IT “inside baseball.” Plus you might just recognize yourself in the story, and be offended, which I would like to avoid. But this one is too good not to share. Please DO NOT fall for this sort of email.
“This IT pilot fish gets a call from a friend who complains that her computer has acquired a virus.
“What happened? fish asks.
“She said that she opened an email from her Internet security provider, warning her that her laptop had been stolen,” says fish. “They would happily help her find it if she would only click on the secure link and download the location to her system.
“Click away she did. She was surprised when her system rebooted with an unknown account on her system and she had no access to anything.
“Calmly I asked, ‘Your laptop is missing? What computer system were you using to read the email?’
“She replied, ‘My laptop of course — it’s the only computer I have, you know that!'”
The moral of the story – use a little common sense when reading your email, and try to catch the phish before it catches you. Also, many of my clients have been believing the security pop-up that tells them their computer is infected and please call this 800 number. These are always fake. So are the unsolicited phone calls from “Microsoft” or “Tech Support” telling you you have a serious malware infection. All fake.
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About the Author:
I am a cybersecurity and IT instructor, cybersecurity analyst, pen-tester, trainer, and speaker. I am an owner of the WyzCo Group Inc. In addition to consulting on security products and services, I also conduct security audits, compliance audits, vulnerability assessments and penetration tests. I also teach Cybersecurity Awareness Training classes. I work as an information technology and cybersecurity instructor for several training and certification organizations. I have worked in corporate, military, government, and workforce development training environments I am a frequent speaker at professional conferences such as the Minnesota Bloggers Conference, Secure360 Security Conference in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, the (ISC)2 World Congress 2016, and the ISSA International Conference 2017, and many local community organizations, including Chambers of Commerce, SCORE, and several school districts. I have been blogging on cybersecurity since 2006 at http://wyzguyscybersecurity.com