{"id":23490,"date":"2019-10-21T21:52:00","date_gmt":"2019-10-21T20:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.diaryofanadi.co.uk\/?p=23490"},"modified":"2023-02-20T00:19:43","modified_gmt":"2023-02-20T00:19:43","slug":"wheels-within-wheels-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/?p=23490","title":{"rendered":"Wheels Within Wheels"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"DilbertThere was a news item on the BBC earlier, which is covered by this article on the BBC website<\/a>. It tells of an elderly chap, Doug Varey, who saw a pop-up on his computer offering security protection for 12 years at a cost of \u00a3556.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A couple of weeks ago, I got an email from TV Licensing (dated 11 October), informing me that my TV licence payment hadn\u2019t gone through, and that I needed to pay before 13 October, otherwise they\u2019d set the debt collectors on me. Within two seconds I had mouthed \u201cf**k off\u201d and clicked the spam button. Then there\u2019s the Virgin Media emails saying much the same thing. And the Sky ones. And don\u2019t even get me started on the avalanche of emails I get telling me I\u2019ve won an Amazon\/Iceland\/M&S\/Sainsburys\/Tesco\/Argos\/etc. gift voucher. Or the latest one where I\u2019ve apparently won a Kia. I\u2019ve had spoofed bank ones before. Even the pop-up ones like that which snared Doug Varey have cropped up from time to time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scammers will get nothing out of me. Unfortunately, they rely on people like Doug Varey \u2013 and the \u201cthousands\u201d of others who fall for it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I use Bitdefender Total Security. It alerts me if I go to an infected website, automatically scans anything I download, and prevents any installed software from accessing protected folders unless I tell it otherwise. It also has ransomware protection and spam filtering among a host of other stuff. It doesn\u2019t slow my computer down. And it costs \u00a320 new on Amazon. It is updated frequently with the latest virus definitions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over 12 years, Bitdefender would cost me \u00a3240. And yet Doug Varey is quoted in that BBC story:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I thought per year, that’s [\u00a3556 is \u00a346 a year] quite cheap. And I agreed to sign up for it.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

It isn\u2019t cheap in any shape or form. Even more so when you consider that once he\u2019d paid, they then appear to have accessed his computer and forced him to cough up another \u00a34,000 to remove an alleged hacker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have a coffee cup with the Dilbert cartoon above on it. Never was anything so true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n