I’ve taken great delight in my second call from someone who wanted to tell me that my computer was distressed and sending their server lots of error messages.
In both cases, the callers were probably in nappies when I started my first job in IT, but still they persisted in the story that I simply MUST help them to get remote control of my computer. Sadly, I got frustrated by the first one (who professed to be calling from Microsoft) and I hung up on her.
Second time around I kept the call going to the bitter end. This one said she was calling on behalf of my broadband provider and when pushed, she reeled off the names of half a dozen companies that she and her colleagues were ‘working for’. To my delight, my ISP wasn’t one of them and she eventually hung up on me.
Your computer will not notify anyone if it’s in trouble. If you work in a large office with a state of the art IT department, they may notice if your computer starts flooding their network. On the otherhand, their systems may just deal with the problem and cut you off, but no-one will call you.
If your computer is running particularly slowly, or sending you to websites you didn’t ask for, then feel free to call us!