Followers, Friends And Frigging Fraudsters!

So, there was I  . . . (I feel like I should be writing – waiting at the church! You have to be a certain age ) enjoying the day, busily doing nothing. Taking in the bursting buds and the buzzing bees when I decided that it was time I DID do something. Richard had toddled off to visit his mother and I had quite a few hours to myself to look forward to. I left the bursting buds and the buzzing bees, convinced that they would manage without me and trundled back to the house.

Determined not to sit at the laptop all morning, I filled the floor steamer and set about steaming the kitchen and hall floors. That went well so I made a cup of tea, before pulling out the kitchen chair and settling in front of the laptop. Well, I had managed to do something before it called me to it!

I had a quick whizz around Twitter, checked my emails and then opened Facebook with the intention of posting to the gardening group. A post on the general thread caught my eye and I clicked on it. ALL HELL BROKE LOOSE.

Window on top of window flooded the P.C screen and a siren sounded. Above the siren, a woman’s voice told me, ‘DO NOT ATTEMPT TO SWITCH OFF THE COMPUTER or a virus will be placed on it. YOUR IDENTITY MAY BE STOLEN and your data accessed. Ring this number IMMEDIATELY and an operative will help you through this.’

WTF?

Something similar had happened a few weeks earlier. Obviously, I did what most people do in this situation – I smashed every key on the keypad, switched off the power, disconnected the internet, blah, blah, blah.

So, here I was again, clicking everything in sight. Banging the keys. Basically doing everything the voice had told me not to do. I couldn’t clear the screen so I took a picture of it and sent it to my brother via my tablet. My fear was that it was genuine. Yes, I know, I can’t believe I even let the thought enter my head – but it did, because it looked very genuine, like it had come straight from Microsoft.  My brother treated me like a five-year old and calmly talked me through it. After a few clicks, here and there, I managed to remove it – my brother managed to remove it.

I kinda went ballistic. No one was around. Only Chea, sitting on the table at the side of me, calmly cleaning her bottom – and she is quite used to my ballistic outbursts.

You see, what makes someone do this? What kind of brain bypass have they had? Truly, if I could have got hold of them I would now be in prison – and they would be in A and E having their tiny, little, insignificant penis stitched back on – all assuming that the sodding moron was a bloke – but I’m sure it was.

And, that’s not all. Once upon a time, when I was naïve (stupid) I’d jump up and down, gushing, thrilled – yes, totally thrilled, even beyond words, that someone wanted to be my friend on Facebook. Not anymore.

Now I vet these ‘friend’ requests with the mind and suspicions of Hercule Poirot. On average I would say that I get half-a-dozen requests a week from men. Single. Divorced. Etc. When I look into them I find an empty timeline and no existing friends – once or twice another female ‘friend’ is evident – usually beautiful and short of enough dosh to buy clothes- obviously.  I’m sorry, but if you are a bloke looking for cyber-sex or a cheeky little pit-pat tennis match/ you show me yours and I’ll show you mine, bugger off! I once had a request from a guy in U.S.A offering me marriage, a home on a ranch, and four children to look after. Now, had he been offering me marriage, a home on a ranch and four horses to look after I might have been buying a one-way ticket to U.S.A – though, in all honesty he did say he would provide that.

Once, I accepted someone based on their profile picture, which admittedly was a little hard to make out but at that point I wasn’t wearing my super-duper P.C. specs and I thought the profile picture looked like mountains. After accepting him, and on closer examination, the mountains were actually his stupendous penis sticking up from his belly. Frankly, I think the whole thing had been superimposed and he’d grafted-on a horse’s penis. Yes, I deleted him.

Social media is not a safe place for the innocent – or the poorly sighted.

And Twitter? Twitter, to my mind, is safer. But you get a trickster of a different type on Twitter. Here you get the ‘follower’ who follows you, you follow back, and then he/she unfollows you. I now use https://manageflitter.com/ once a week to unfollow those who have unfollowed me. Well, bugger off, fair’s fair.

And to finish off with where I almost started – waiting at the church. The punch line to this 1962 song is;

There was I, waiting at the church,
Waiting at the church,
Waiting at the church;
When I found he’d left me in the lurch,
Lor, how it did upset me!
All at once, he sent me round a note
Here’s the very note,
This is what he wrote:
“Can’t get away to marry you today,
My wife, won’t let me!”

You see, more deceit. Watch your backs my friends.

 

 

 

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