@Mike_Mabes, your time is valuable. I again suggest spending a few hundred on a Chromebook, unless your mom really needs a PC.
…sent from my Chromebook
I work in an international consultancy and about 20 to 30% of staff are of Indian origin. They mostly “sound Indian”*
Most of them have better English than I, though I am born English, to an Engish speaking English teacher.
* given the fact that India is a hugely diverse country with multiple languages and with great regional diversity in those languages.
Edit: posted after mod advice; I will not continue.
You could try this on the existing PC:
I don’t work for Google or anything, but Chromeos is really secure and really easy to use.
Ask them where they are at. It’ll be a place in the US. And then ask them what time it is. Pause while they pull up a world clock on their computer.
I don’t think location will work, but I like the time idea.
As for the other comments, obviously fake names say scam to me. There are plenty of easy to pronounce Indian names in case someone wants to have a stage name. I know hundreds of Indian people in my field, and only one has a Western name, and given his Biblical first and last names I suspect he came from a Christian community. Never asked him about it.
And I was thinking of people who call you. But 99% of them are scammers whatever name they use.
Moderating:
Drop it!
Assuming that your 80-year-old mother won’t be applying for credit anytime soon, she may also wish to place a freeze on her credit with the three credit bureaus. This will keep the scammers from opening credit cards in her name should they have gotten personal information off her computer. It can always be unfrozen should she need to apply for a line of credit in the future.
My mother-in-law was taken in by this a few years back and we did the same song and dance with reformatting and the credit card company. When it came time to replace the laptop, I guided her to an iPad with a keyboard case rather than a chrome book.
Repurposing the existing laptop as a Chromebook is probably cheaper, but, sure, whatever floats various boats!
Converting the computer to a Chromebook might be cheaper, but the OP’s mother is already familiar with Windows; will she be able to adjust?
If, like most people, she spends most of her time in a browser, that’s basically the Chromebook experience. I don’t know what she does with her computer, of course – maybe she’s a gamer or video editor, and it wouldn’t work for those things.
ETA: It has a mouse pointer, windows, tabs, all just like a PC. I would think the curve from a PC to a Chromebook would be shallower than from a PC to an iPad.
Yeah, and iPad is much more different.
But things that will feel different on a chrome book are email (unless you already use a web-based email client) and perhaps moving from one task to another.
Things that you can’t do on a Chromebook include most word processors (the google word processor works, but feels VERY different from what most people are used to) and any serious editing of content. Also many games.
When my MIL had this exact scam, we threw away her infected computer, as we weren’t able to reimage it. But we gave her a new Windows computer because she had a lot of saved work in WordPerfect that was valuable to her, and she used it from time to time.
Not to hijack, but I get so frustrated with my elderly mother’s computer woes, and those of her elderly roommate, that I begin to think they should both give up computing just like they both need to give up driving. They’ve both fallen for this exact scam multiple times, and they’re absolutely helpless prey the next time it inevitably happens. Just a few months ago the roommate gave away her bank accounts (!) and social security number (!!!) to a very nice young man she called as a result of a scam popup. That was a fun mess to clean up, and I’m sure we haven’t seen the last of the fallout.
I recently realized how out of it my mother was, when she paid an in-person con artist big bucks to install Windows 11 on her 10-year-old machine, essentially bricking it (and making it impossible for me to remote-control it). Aside from the incredible slowness, she found it impossible to use after the switch because everything looked different, notably: “My Amazon’s gone.” After a lot of hard questioning, I finally realized she’d been using an Amazon launcher app on the desktop. She had absolutely no idea that Amazon.com was a website that one could visit via a browser (and no notion of what a browser is, or any idea of whether she’s on the internet or not, whether she’s shopping on Amazon or playing Solitaire. It’s all just different things on a screen to her.)
I’m sorry to be mean and impatient, but I feel like it’s just time to step away from the computer permanently. It’s way too much of a risk. But then again, so is having a telephone, so long as she has credit cards.
My post was not intended as anti-Indian-accent but rather catching a scammer claiming to be in the US (hence asking their location). I’ve seen it used against scammers from Nigeria claiming to be from the US. I’ve also heard that it has even caught scammers in the US in a time zone like EST claiming to be from Amazon in California and responding instinctually when asked their time although I’ve never seen any evidence that that has ever happened.
Good suggestion! Aside from potential computer hacking per this thread, I keep my credit frozen by default at all three credit companies, and only unfreeze it when needed. When we had some work done on our bathroom we took out a small loan, and I knew they would check my credit, so I asked them which credit company they were going to look at, and only unlocked that one, and only for the short time they were going to be checking. Same for when we bought a car.
While its definitely a scam of a sort, and your mother should play it better safe than sorry and take the defensive measures described above, I will buck the trend and say that it is not guaranteed that some major identity theft is in the offing.
If it is a semi-legit company they may want to toe the line at the edge of legality rather than cross the line into something that could land them in prison for years. It may just be a highly deceptive advertising scheme to get your mom to sign up for a subscription that includes the installation of some basic anti-virus application that is no better than what comes free with windows, with maybe a little bit of minor malware that tracks her browsing habits to send to marketers and drops ads on her now and then. So nothing that will get them in serious trouble but a nice constant revenue stream for them none the less.
Still its better safe than sorry so your mom should assume that they are very bad actors.
I think you have it. I didn’t know until yesterday that this happened last Friday.And no money was withdrawn and there was no attempt to do so. I think it was a low level scam, maybe a refund scam as mentioned above. But I am going to do a clean install anyway, her computer is very slow.
For all those suggestions for Mom about getting a Chromebook, thank you but she is not a vulnerable 80 year old who knows nothing about scams, she asked the scum on that phone call how she would know if he is scamming her, and I can’t remember the details but she checked out the company somehow and it looked legit, this is a very sophisticated scam, if you go to thier webisite you will see the work they have put into to make it look legit. She is embarrased. As am I.
If I had been there when it happend I would have known right away it was a scam, but I heard the story second hand and warning flags in my mind did not go up, until the next day. They should have and again I feel stupid, but I have read that not enough makes your brain act like it is drunk. I read the last paragraph of the OP and I don’t even know what I was talking about.
I feel your pain, but in reverse. My elderly mother is completely disconnected by choice, not even e-mail access, which means she is becoming increasingly reliant on me to do basic things for her because every-fucking-thing is now online in order to save money/streamline efficiency. Much of what she used to do with phone calls or by mail now demand online access. The ironic thing is that she’s a naturally suspicious if not a downright paranoid person, so she probably wouldn’t fall for most common scams. Pity we can’t swap 
.
Ah, well - the grass is always greener.
My friend has one of those things you talk to (but also an expensive phone, a top-of-the-line tablet and a large iMac). I find the voice device, well, just, I would never buy one or plug one in if it was gifted me, but some older, more vulnerable people might actually do well with one. My friend’s has a display on it (about 6", I think), so that would take care of most of some older persons’ needs. You just have to tell it to respond to “you bleedin’ whore” or some other obscure form of address so that it does not mistake its name from conversation.
Excellent idea. I did this after the hack on the credit agency, and have never noticed the slightest inconvenience from doing so. Not a good idea if you intend to take out loans, but I’m past that as is your typical 80-year-old mother.