On 7/17/23 I was hit by a scam that locked m system and told me to call Microsoft technicians. THIS IS A SCAM! Microsoft staes they nor any other reliable company ould ever lock your system out. Do NOT get caught in repsonding to a scam like this or another related to reCAPTCHA authentication!
First, the lockout: It locks everyhing -- keyboard, mouse, etc. Usually you could get to Task Manager and free your self from the lockout by ending the browser task. Cant do that now. Plus, it scares you into believing that if you power off your system will be damaged. NOT TRUE. The only wy to get rid of this lockour IS TO POWER OFF , AND most importantly, HOLDING that power key about 10 seconds to assure your system relly powers off. Otherwise, it remains in standby mode and restarting (power on) goes back to lockout issue. So, HOLD the power key 10+ seconds and when your system indicates it is fully powered off, then power back on.
According to Internet articles, this scam is NOT dangerous in itself, meaning that it doesn't load malware or a virus. I certainly wouldn't believe that, So, I ran FULL Windows Security scan. BUT, I am having bad luck doing that. It seems to NOT complete some times. After the third try (one was even the OFFLINE scan by defender), the FULL scan did complete and found a low malware that I had it remove. However, today I was hit again and it took 2 FULL scans to complete one and it showed no threats. Suggestion is DO run a full scan of some product to be sure.
How did I get into this lockout? One time I wsa reading a historical genealogy article that had a lhypertext link to more detail, and WHAM! Today, I simply mistyped a website and WHAM. I can only beieve the scam triggers by IP Address activity that some machine is monitoring for active state. Somehow it can catch some interation of the IP with a site and send out the scam to that IP address. Microsoft needs to get a handle on this!
Now, a secon scam is the CAPTCHA or reCAPTCHA popup telling you further authentication is required. This happens sometimes when websites mistyped and you go off to one that is a scam site. It sends out the reCAPTCH popup and wants you to respond. DO NOT! Do not respond to one of these unless you are expecting to require an authoentication for real! This is a common way for hackers to get you to hit that enter key and establish a connection tho their machines. Yesterday I was helping an old age 85) friend set up his genealogy PC software. He was visual impairment, so his screen it at about 400$ magnification and that is minimum size he can see with glasses on. Anyway, a mistype on that screen (I had terrible time working in that mode) a red screen cmae up with a box in the moddel being reCAPTCHA! I immediately informed him that I had to have gone to invalid site and this was a SCAM screen and never to respond to it ! So, beware! You can red all about these types of scams re reCAPTCHA yourself.
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