Mayayana 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 ?

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.

Paul