"Paul" wrote

| Yesterday morning I woke up to find my ladyfriend
| on the phone with "Microsoft tech support". She'd
| let them onto her system, they showed her the
| system error log and she paid them almost $500!
|
| Have you done the credit card reversal yet ?
|

Yes. She called them immediately and they said
they'll block the charge as fraudulent.

| I hope there was a recent backup, to restore
| over that mess. While they're not likely to leave
| something nasty on the victims machine, you can't
| take chances.
|

I did a thorough check. The only change I could
find was a new install of Firefox. I'm not sure what
the point of that was. I removed all of it and
re-installed that fresh.

I've only dealt with this kind of thing once before,
but in both cases they seemed to be concerned only
with fooling people and getting money. In other words,
they want your computer to work well when they
get through because they don't want you to doubt
their legitimacy and cancel the payment.