CTRL WINDOWS R SCAM KEYGEN
I stand by the advice of just hanging up, or saying “please remove me from your list and don’t call me again” and then hang up.ĮDIT FOR SEP 2019: It’s still going! Wow. Never give your credit card over the phone to any stranger who called you.ĮDIT FOR JAN 2015: It’s amazing to me how long this scam has been running and how many comments this post gets.Never run commands that you don’t know 100% what they do (especially if a stranger is telling you to run them).Never trust anything that is being told to you over the phone/email from someone contacting you about your computer.Instead, get someone you trust to check out your computer. You should never trust people who cold-call you with such information. Most likely the caller is a scam artist who will try to convince you that your computer has a virus or is otherwise doing bad things, and then magically they happen to know this information somehow, and also magically they happen to be able to sell you a solution.
Just hang up on them and ignore the call.
As a rule of thumb, even if the command is safe, NO ONE FROM A COMPANY CALLED “WINDOWS” WILL EVER CALL YOU ABOUT A VIRUS. So then you know what to type next time.ĮDIT FOR JUNE, 2013: From the comments below, a lot of you are getting suspicious calls telling you to run various commands using the Win+R key. If you look in your Microsoft Office folder (such as C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office14) you will see Applications, such as POWERPNT.EXE. If you view the properties of the shortcuts, you can find the program name. What happens is that Windows will look through a list of directories (known as your “ path“) for an application (that is, a program file ending in. There is not an easy way, because there’s no definitive list. More recent versions of Windows also let you type in a URL, such as and it will open in a browser automatically.ĮDIT FOR FEB, 2012: Megan asked in the comments how you know what to type. You can also open directories by pressing Win+R, then typing the directory name (such as C:\TEMP) and pressing Enter. cmd: Command prompt for running DOS-style commands.Once you’ve got the Run dialog box open, you can type in the name of a program and then Enter. Usually you would select it from the Start menu, but a shortcut is to press the Windows key and R. The “Run” dialog box from the Windows Start menu is a handy way to open an application or document.