Off Topic - Beware Scammers

[Giulia]

Phone just rang.  "Hello?"  Pause.  "Hello is this Mrs. Bri....? " (pronounced the name wrong).  My antenna is on alert.  "Yes."  Pause.  He asked another question to which I answer a terse "yes."  "I'm calling from Medicare."  Antenna is vibrating now.  He  then said something about my having arthritis.  My brain is sending LOUD warning signals.  It's odd because I just had some xrays taken and found out two days ago that I have severe arthritis.  Coincidence?  Whatever the case it was disturbing.  Brain is churning.  Why would Medicare have that info?  Why would they be calling?  I think for a minute and then say:  "I've never knows Medicare to call."  That's when he hung up.

Then I realized I might have already blown it because I said "Yes."  Which means they might have taped my voice.  That recorded "yes" response can get hackers into accounts over the telephone.

I'm still very disturbed about this "coincidence" of having just been diagnosed with arthritis and this call.  Logic dictates that they might have hacked into the Medicare files and that a lot of people on Medicare have arthritis, so it may have no real connection to my recent xray diagnosis.  However I do have a patient portal set up with the diagnostic place.  And I did log into it to view my xrays.  Disturbing.

Word to the wise.  What your backs - not only with this addiction.

[marciem]

I'm  a tech dummy Legend ... that sounds like great advice!  I found how to do it.  NOW, my question is, if I have computer problems, will I be able to get to it to enable it if I call a tech support and they ask to get in and fix something?  I don't know if that's even needed, and I *Never* need to access my computer remotely, but still the worry lingers.  

Anyways, I did it and I thank you for the advice!

[Mandolinrain]

Im glad your posting and alerting. I had a VERY weird one, actually several yesterday. When my cell phone rang the window showed it was MY PHONE NUMBER calling me. I thought I accidentally bump dialed it. When it happened within a few seconds, I answered. A robotic voice comes on saying something about my license is going to expire in 48 hours and I will loss my IP number if I don't......Thats when I hung up. Yesterday I got about a dozen of these using MY OWN NUMBER. So normally I would delete that call but I cant delete my own number can I?

Guess I will be trying to get to Verizon later today or tomorrow. SO frustrating!

SOOOOO.......If you get any weird calls from my number, its not me;. Just an FYI. If I call you , you will know its me

[marciem]

Wow, Mandolinrain‌ ... I thought spoofing my neighborhood prefix was bad... your own number?  Wowl.

Is everybody as outraged as I am that the services WE pay for are basically being held hostage by the scammers and spammers?  Used to be great to get a phone call, talk to a friend/relative, answer without worry.  Now, our email (ok, I use free gmail but I pay for the internet connection) and phones are mostly for somebody else's profits or use.  UGH UGH UGH.

AND... UGH UGH UGH.  I somehow accidentally tripped over something on instagram the other day, and now I'm getting all these lewd offers like happened long ago when my son had access to my computer (so I'm assuming he went somewhere he wasn't talking about)... anyways, I am trying to use gmail's filter to send these buzzards away.  Never had them for years and years.  Also got a text string of some sort that I deleted without seeing if it was nasty... someone else in the string said "ewwwww.... I didn't send this"  so I assumed it wasn't anything I wanted to see.  Again, email/phone = hostage.

[Mandolinrain]

I am seriously going back to a simple phone when this iPhone dies. I never really use the internet on it. Just call texts and photos. Thats all I need from it. Im not a facebook person, don't need that either. I think the world has gotten to

TECHIE and humans are being replaced by robots that cant add or subtract anymore, lol...and for those of you who remember Edith Ann from Laugh-in.." Thats all I got to say about that"

[Giulia]

Legend‌  No, I did not have the remote access unchecked.  But I do now, thanks to YOU!  This is great to know about.  Hope others see your message here.

[Giulia]

Yes, you will be able to just click the box to enable it once again marciem‌.

[marciem]

Thanks, Giulia... I was thinking in terms of if my 'puter froze or wouldn't boot up, so I'd get to call tech support and be robo-told that if I needed help I should log on to XXXX.com hahaha and then wait for half an hour to be transferred to a higher up tech who would want to access my computer.  That has happened to me before. 

[Giulia]

To turn off (or on) remote access to your computer:

Click the Start button, right click Computer, then left click Properties, then Remote Settings.

[Christine13]

So sorry about your arthritis Guilia.  How awful that these scammers are able to take advantage of so many.

It's scary.  I also have calls but I have an unlisted number and that gets rid of most of them.

[Legend]

marciem  Giulia  I see Giulia has answered your question you asked. A long time ago I had called tech support and I had my computer set so the remote access was not allowed and even the tech support guy back then could not get into my computer he had me change that setting for him so he could help me. I never had any problems changing that setting as long as my computer did not crash all the way.

Be sure you DID press the ok or save button before you got off that section that you made changes on.

The other change I made to my computer was if my computer freezes up for some reason and I can’t do anything even get off the regular way I did I changed the power options so I could just turn off my computer also by just pressing the on button the one when you first get on your computer that helped me last time my computer froze up and would not let me do anything I just hit the power button  to turn off my computer and then turned my computer back on after a minute and that fixed the problem I was having or you can just pull out the battery if you have a laptop computer and then put the battery back in and see if you can sign back on again.  It says now on my computer under power options when I press the power button to shut down. If I ever get off my computer by turning the power off like that I get a message when I get back on that my computer did not shut down right and it gives me options to get back on and I just let the computer choose the way it wants to get back up again and it does it automatically after so many seconds If I don’t choose one of the options. I’m still on windows 7.