Phone call

[Drsolly <drsollyp () drsolly com>]

I just got a fun phone call.

It was, he said, from Microsoft. They've found a virus on my computer!

"Oh no," I said.

"Yes," he said.

He then offered me a free thing for getting rid of it, which I gratefully 
accepted.

He talked me through starting up my computer, running Internet Explorer, 
going to his web site, clicking on a link to download his software, and 
then running his software, all of which I did eagerly, while finding ways 
to get him to tell me what I ought to be seeing, so that I could tell him 
that's what I was indeed seeing. 

Then he asked me for the code number that came up, and that's where I
failed. I gave him a seven digit number, as requested, and he said it was
wrong. So I gave it again. No, it's wrong. At that point, I didn't feel
that I could plausibly change the number, and anyway, I didn't know how to
change it to make it right, so I gave it to him a third time.

He regretfully concluded that he wasn't going to be able to help me, and 
we parted good friends.

I'm guessing that the number encoded my IP address. But this seems to me 
to be an apallingly expensive way to plant a bot on spmepne's computer. 
What happened to good old-fashioned spam?

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