Covid 19- what I am doing.

***UPDATE – Mon 20th July : ***

Now that restrictions are being lifted and government guidelines are changing it is now possible for me to visit people to carry out work. I can do remote work where possible and will accept work being dropped off with me. Please telephone first before any action is taken.

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To reassure my customers, both old and new, here are my plans to keep running whilst continuing to stay safe and helping to beat this virus.

I am still willing to come out to customers, but will be taking precautions. I have sanisiting wipes for cleaning keyboards etc after working on your computer and will also be wearing disposable gloves to minimise transfer of anything from hand to computer. I would ask customers to keep their distance where practical, by keeping out of the same room.

If you need my services but don’t want a home or office visit, then I am happy for you to bring your computer to me. It can be dropped off in my porch so no actual contact needs to be made.

I can also undertake some work by remote connection if necessary as long as you are running Windows 10.

As most people are still working from home, be aware this will continue to have an impact on remote working software and the internet speed in general. Most Internet Service Providers will have already had contingency plans in place for this. BT have said the extra daytime demand will be no worse than when we all watch Netflix in the evening.

If you have any questions please get in touch by phone or email.

https://www.srcomputers.co.uk/contact

I thought I would broach the subject of scam calls again this month.

They are still around and seem to be on the increase again.

There are two mains attacks to be aware of at the moment, as follows.

Amazon

Firstly, and the most common is a scam where the caller pretends to be from Amazon and is calling about your Amazon Prime account. They claim that your payments have lapsed, and your account will be suspended.

Quite often it is a recorded message or computerised voice that you hear. This should be obvious that it is a scam.

Then they try to take payment from you to ‘reactivate’ the account. It is, of course, bogus and under no circumstances should you give them any payment information.

If you do, the scammers will try and take as much as they can from you. One customer of mine was recently a victim and the scammers tried to take nearly £20,000. Luckily, the customer’s bank stopped the transaction as they suspected it was fraudulent.

ISP

The other scam calls still doing the rounds are callers pretending to be from your Internet Service Provider, or I.S.P. for short.

They claim to be from B.T., Virgin or whoever your ISP may be. The premise is that they have detected a problem with your service and need access to your computer to ‘fix’ it for you. This is untrue in every case and under no circumstances should you let them have access to your computer.

Once they gain access you have no control of what they do and see. They can then install anything, including malware, key logging software or set up the remote access so they can continue to get access in the future without your knowledge.

Computer message

Another variation on this scam is one that starts on your computer. A message may pop up on your screen saying you have a problem and to call a particular number in order to ‘fix’ it.

This again is a scam, and you should not ever call the number displayed. They will, again, try to persuade you to grant them access to your computer. Usually these messages pop up as a result of a compromised advert on a webpage.

As ever if you have been affected by any of the above scams then please get in touch for assistance and advice as to what to do next.

Contact me

Thank you for reading,

Damian