Wally Spiers: Where are the IT folks when you need them?

Amazingly enough, one of the things I miss most in my retirement is the people in Information Technology services.

Sure, I used to make fun of them, just like everyone else. But when I called with a problem, someone always came and took care of it eventually.

Not like last week, when I ran afoul of some clever scammers on the Internet. I thought I was talking to the security people I had hired to keep my computer safe, but somehow I ended up with a different company which attempted to sell me hundreds of dollars worth of security services for problems they apparently had caused.

It left me sitting in the living room while my wife spent several hours on the phone trying to get things sorted out. I felt like a little kid back in the principal’s office waiting to see how much trouble I was in. It wasn’t encouraging when in the middle of this all she looked over and shot me with her finger.

But she got it straightened out and all was well — or so we thought. When she checked another security source on her computer the next day she found that she had been scammed by the same company that got me — and for more money.

By the time she got it all straightened out, we think, it had consumed most of a day and left us feeling like helpless old fogeys. But all the good guys assured us that some of the scams they have been running into are exceptionally sneaky and the bogus stuff is almost exactly like the real stuff. The scammers run right next to the line on illegality but don’t cross it, relying on the lack of knowledge of people like me to make money.

I mean, if someone I thought was an expert told me that my problem on the Internet information highway was that a troll was living under a bridge and demanded I pay money to pass, I would have to pay it.

If they said that the information superhighway was closed by a blizzard and I was going to have to spend money to stay at an online motel for a couple of nights, I wouldn’t know any better.

The Internet is a wonderful thing, but Lord knows there are some misleading directional signs out there, and they pop up without warning, sometimes right under your cursor. It’s not like a real highway where you can tell the proper signs from the advertisements.

I always thought I could muddle through, but I am starting to look more and more like the poor elderly people who get scammed constantly by telephone solicitors. My scamming was just higher-tech, and I avoided the problem, I think.

It probably won’t get much better. In the middle of the computer problems, I had to retrace my steps from a shopping trip so I could retrieve my smart phone that I had left behind in a store.

I can foresee a long journey ahead on the information superhighway. I’ll be the guy chugging along in the slow lane with my turn signal on.

Editor’s note: Wally couldn’t get his e-mail to work, so he came up to the office where an editor rescued this column from the clutches of his laptop.

This story was originally published January 30, 2016 at 6:25 AM with the headline "Wally Spiers: Where are the IT folks when you need them?."