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Phone scam aimed at computer virus cleanup
Posted: 07.13.2012 at 10:55 AM
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AMARILLO, TEXAS -- With more and more personal information saved on your computers, protecting your identity has never been more difficult.  

Just ask Amarillo local Ruby Taylor, whose credit card information was stolen after a misleading phone call.

"They would go with my husband on the computer and say, well you've got this many viruses and we're gonna clean those up" said Ruby.

The phone call was supposedly from Microsoft, who informed Ruby their virus ridden computer could be fixed by downloading a program which costs ninety dollars. But it wasn't long until the computer really began having problems.

"Well we had trouble with our computer so we took it to someone here in town to have it checked out, and the man said we had zero protection" said Ruby. Worried as to where her money went, Ruby called the faux Microsoft back.

"He goes, I'm here to give you our money back, and so then I kinda calmed down a little bit, and I thought well finally maybe we're about to get some satisfaction" said Ruby.

Instead of satisfaction, the Taylor's were charged an additional $360. These scams are nothing new to Cat-Man-Du's lead technician Jeremy Hollis

"Microsoft will never call anybody, Microsoft will never email you directly. Just anything like that if you get a direct anything from a company saying hey we need to clean your computer up, you have a virus. It's gonna be a scam." said Jeremy.

According to Jeremy, if you feel suspicious about odd behavior on your computer, call an expert or bring the computer in. Ruby was in fact able to cancel the $360 charge before it processed, a fortunate end to a hard earned lesson.

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