When Tech Support Calls, Tell Them…

“It Won’t Be Bothering You Again”

An eager young rep from “Microsoft tech support” called me, one morning, to inform me that my computer was sending distress signals to its central servers, for weeks, now, and was infected by some sort of virus or hacking software and warned me it might stop working.

“Are you sitting in front of your computer, ma’am?”

“No. And it’s not on. It’s not even connected to — wait, you’re saying that, even while it’s off, it’s sending messages to Microsoft?”

“Yes, ma’am, every Windows computer is designed to do this ma’am, to alert us if there’s any problem…”

I did not tell him that I worked for HP, and that I probably would have heard of this feature, had we designed it into the hardware or had Microsoft designed it into the operating system. “That’s disturbing,” I said. “It’s talking to Microsoft right now?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Hang on, let me go find it and turn it on. Can you stay on the line with me?” I asked, doing my best, now, to sound a little alarmed and afraid of the creature that lurked, phoning the mothership, from inside my computer.

“Of course, ma’am.”

“Thank you. This is really upsetting. You’re saying that my computer is sending you messages right this minute?” I proceeded to rummage around, noisily, in the garage for supplies. After several minutes, I headed out to the back porch with a…