Dear Editor,

I watch a lot of YouTube videos, and one topic the Algorithm had offered to me recently, is Scammers Payback, a channel where a very savvy fellow calls a spurious Internet helpline, and using a voice altering device, takes them on a time wasting hayride, keeping them occupied with the notion of taking this ‘helpless elderly granny’ for a few hundred dollars. By keeping the would be scammers occupied, he prevents them from taking money away from other callers. He also reverses the infiltration and gets data and photos from their computers and can sometimes trace their actual location, while deleting stolen identity information from their computers. That’s why it’s called payback.

This informal course of study should have prepared me to be cautious with on line interactions, but it wasn’t quite enough. My printer started a slow death-by-parts march, just when I was preparing to do a significant round of printing. There was a paper jam, which I removed, but the paper jam alert remained, and the printer would not function. Despite my having taken the machine apart and ascertained that there was no paper jam, the paper jam alert persisted. I replaced one part after another, costing hundreds of dollars, and in distress, I resorted to on line help. I went to what I thought was an official Brother help site, but actually, I had been routed to a scammer den. They offered standard ‘unplug it, wait, then plug it back in’ advice, which didn’t eliminate the problem.

Then came the coup d’grace. I was told they could remotely fix my problem, if I would download and install a program whereby they control my computer and fix the printer. Yes, you guessed it, this was a big mistake on my part.

If you find yourself in this type of situation, please remember that a problem with your printer is in the printer, not your computer and their controlling your computer is only for the purpose of their grabbing data, such as passwords, credit card information, etc. that may be useful to other scammers. That information is bought and sold among scammer dens and may take a while before results show up.

So, now I’m checking my bank accounts regularly, to see if any spurious charges show up. If they do. I’ll know where they came from. I gave up on fixing my elderly printer and bought a new one, which doesn’t print quite as well as the old one did, just before the paper jam incident.

It’s embarrassing enough for me to confess my distress-driven gullibility, so please, people, let this be a warning that saves you from falling prey to this new hazard of modern life.

Robert Wills

Shawville and Thorne, Que.