He had a roommate who sometimes used his computer. He comes home one day to a message on the screen, full screen saying "This computer is locked by the NSA. We have detected illegal activity including child pornogry(yes spelt that way). You may send $300 in Walgreens gift card codes to (some yahoo email address I forget) or you will be arrested. This computer can not be unlocked."

He panics thinking his roommate did something, shut down the computer, removed the hard drive and memory.

Two years later I hear about this and tell him it's fake and let me take a look at it. Turns out the computer was not" locked". I got into the system by booting into safe mode. There was a program added to the start up folder of the start menu(this was in windows xp). That program literally just launched a window with that message, set to full screen with no close button. Out of curiosity I rebooted the system message popped up and I just hit alt-f4 and had full control of the system. These scans are designed for people to panic and not think critically.

[–] cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 14 points 8 months ago

to be fair it's entirely believable that this government would do that

[–] Tau@sopuli.xyz 6 points 8 months ago (1 children)

under the rest

[–] drasticpotatoes@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 8 months ago

Please don’t put me beneath everyone. I won’t be able to breathe.

[–] DecentralizeTheWorld@lemmy.whynotdrs.org 1 points 8 months ago

Thank goodness! I need a rest