Scams Abound – BEWARE!

I never thought I’d write such an email. Honestly, I’m not the most tech-savvy person in the world, but this time, it really wasn’t me. But I understand how it could happen to any of us. Thus, this cautionary post.

My printer has been acting stupid for a long time. Really since the day I got it. This week, we tried all we knew to do to get it to work. It is an HP 8020. So, this week, my sweet husband came into my office to troubleshoot. He did what we all do, went to the booklet which came with the printer, found the needed website, went to it in a Google search, and found a phone number that was associated with printer driver troubles.

In talking with the nice young man, he convinced hubby to let him take over control of my desktop computer. Another mistake. Huge mistake!

Now, I was in the shower and knew none of this was going on until I came into my office to compose this post and found I would have to wait. I hung around to see what was going on and to answer questions about how horribly my printer had behaved since purchasing it three years ago.

 

GUT FEELING

I had a feeling once I saw the error messages on the screen. I had received nothing like that, ever.

The customer service person, who sounded like so many who help us these days, showed over 16,000 error messages in the past hour.

What? I hadn’t even used my printer for over two days, as it wasn’t working at all. Now, this was supposed to have been someone from HP who knew all about drivers and such. And now, he was showing me all these error messages?

Scams Abound - BEWARE!! @DDuPreeWilliams #Scams #PasswordChanges #BEWARE! Share on X

RED FLAGS FLEW!

I called our son, my anything tech go-to person, and put him on Facetime. I told him to be quiet but to listen and watch my screen.

Dutiful son that he is told me to end the conversation immediately. So, I wrote a message to hubby to stop and shut down my computer.

Hubby hung up on him without saying goodbye. The CS person immediately tried to phone back twice. He didn’t leave any sort of message.

THANKFUL FOR MY BOYS!

Son went into investigative mode. He went to HP, put in the phone number from which the fella had called back, and discovered that since February 2, 2025, it has been a known scam.

Not a good thing. Hubby feels awful about being sucked in. But y’all! These people are so good at this. Things like this that look legit could easily get past any of us.

So, we have been in the process of changing all our passwords. First step was to change our IP address and our Wi-Fi password. This was easier than one would think. We changed the password first, then called our internet provider. Easy. That is step one if anything like this happens to you. Next were all financial institutions. Then, anything on which our cards are auto charged for anything. As a writer, you can imagine how many sites I’m having to deal with. It seems endless.

 TIME WASTED CHANGING THINGS

It is going to take a few days to get all these things done. Just so many sites on which we have auto-pay accounts.

I hope you never have to do anything like this. Hubby cannot believe he fell for this scam. Always check with your browser for any known scams before you do something like this. They have a good idea of who is out there implementing scams on gullible people, especially those of us who are older.

Some main points, if it doesn’t seem likely, it probably isn’t. Just because a website looks legitimate doesn’t mean it is. Check with scam alerts before you just trust handing over your computer to anyone. My son doesn’t even trust the place many of you have said you use for diagnostics and fixes. He told me to call him.

Next time, that is exactly what we will do! I wish you all had someone like him who really knows his stuff and knows where to find all the bad guys out there.

Beware, my friends! They live among us.

Blessings, y’all!

I think we all, but especially those scammers, need to ask themselves this question. Love seeing these older people. And y’all know how I love Larry Ford! He’s sung with my niece,

Melanie Foshee Geenen before in Ft. Myers, FL. Love Larry’s late mother, whom my family called, “Mama Lessie”.  Lovely lady who prayed for my sweet sister.