PC Pro website has an article on a scam that’s currently targeting UK residents.  The scammers cold-call unsuspecting marks and claim that “Microsoft” has found a virus on their PC, and they’ll help to fix it.  Mark is told to download some software.  At this point the article is a little hazy, but it would seem that the downloaded software probably is a virus, and the chap on the end of the phone will then “fix” this problem.. for a small fee. 

As usual, this scam requires the marks to be generally ignorant or, at least, pretty trusting of the random guy who has just called (who also has somehow magically determined their phone number based on their computer and has the ability to remotely determine that you’re affected by a virus, but can’t fix it for you.) so generally it’s praying on the weak, but then that’s what sorry-ass scammers do, isn’t it?

So be careful out there, and if someone phones you claiming to be able to sort out a computer problem that you don’t even know you have, well, play them at their own game and cost them a bit of money by leaving them on hold whilst you make dinner / go to a movie / play your favourite game.

When they say that something is “too good to be true”, it probably is. And it’s not just limited to how chocolatey your cake is, either. It turns out that the giant’s footprint sequence in the Chinese Olympic opening ceremony was shown to viewers as a computer-generated set of images, rather than the real thing. There was a real set of footprints set off, but it was not recorded live due to safety fears, and because it was thought that a helicopter would not be able to properly track the footsteps. So, basically, it was pre-generated CGI designed to look good. I suppose you can’t blame them for that, but when so many other things looked good, too, how much of that was not real?