Technical Support

by JustAnotherHistoryBuff

The Syskey

When Luna first got her computer, she thought it was the best thing in Equestria since sliced bread. In her downtime before Night Court would begin, Luna would surf the web for hours on end using the human wifi network that was set up by technicians brought from the human dimension. The thing is though, she tended to do it too much at certain times and Celestia would have to unplug the WiFi network just so that Luna would get off her computer. After a while, Celestia thought that Luna was cured of her little "addiction" and would periodically plug the wifi back in for certain amounts of time. All was well after that... until the pop-up came.

It all happened one day when Luna was searching up cat videos on the human website called Google when it came up. When she clicked on one of the links, her browser immediately redirected to a pop-up alert.

VIRUS ALERT FROM MICROSOFT
This computer is BLOCKED
Do not close this window and restart your computer.
Your computer's registration key is BLOCKED

Under the pop-up was a number that the window said to call. When Luna tried to close the window, it would not close but instead another pop-up came up each time she pressed the X button on the screen. Seeing no other choice, she called the number on the screen for "Technical Support."

When she first called the number, she is as immediately put on hold and every now and then, a voice coming from the receiver of her phone kept on repeating "Your call is very important to us, please stay on the line and wait for the next available agent." This went on for a good 12-15 minutes and put Luna's already thinned sanity line on the edge. It got so annoying that when Celestia came in to tell Luna that the wifi was about to be turned off, Luna nearly threw the phone at her sister with near murder in her eyes. Finally though, the call went through and Luna listened in on how she was supposed to unlock the computer.

"Thank you for calling Premium Microsoft Technical Support. My name is Jack, I am a level 2 support technician. How can I help you?" The "support technician" asked.

"Um... yes, I have a pop-up on my computer and it says that my computer is blocked." Luna replied.

"Alright Ma'am can I please get a name?"

"Do you take full royal titles?"

"Your name ma'am. What is your name?" The support technician asked with a somewhat irritated tone.

"Luna, Princess of the Night, Co-Ruler of Equestria and her provinces." Luna stated on the phone.

"Alright ma'am can you repeat please?" The technician said.

"Repeat? I just gave you my name and titles."

"Your name ma'am I just want your name." Came a very irritated reply.

"Does Luna work fine for you then?" Luna asked, slightly pissed off.

"Yes, thank you ma'am." The technician said, his tone suddenly changing back to a more friendlier tone.

For a while, there was nothing but constant (and rather annoying) typing coming from the technicians end and a few words in some other human language that sounded very much like Hindi.

Probably an outsource. Luna thought. She had read a few human articles about how many companies were outsourcing to India so it did not surprise her one bit. Finally after a few minutes, the call started back up again.

"Alright, thank you for waiting Ma'am. Please tell me, what is the problem ma'am?"

What is the problem? I just gave you the problem... Luna thought. She was half tempted to tell but she decided against it.

"I said that I got a pop-up on my screen and it says my computer has been locked." She said, a slight hint of malice in the tone of her voice.

"Alright ma'am. We will fix the problem now, okay ma'am?"

"Alright. What must I do?" Luna asked, curious about the solution.

"Alright ma'am, first I need to know, are you using a laptop or a dextop?" Asked the technician.

"I am sorry, Dextop?" Luna asked, puzzled at what the technician asked about.

"Yes ma'am, are you using a laptop or a dextop?" The technician asked again.

"What is a dextop?"

"Your computer ma'am. A dextop. A computer with a tower ma'am."

"Oh... You mean a desktop. Um, yes I have a desktop." Luna replied.

"Alright, thank you ma'am. Now, look at the screen for me now please ma'am." The technician instructed.

"Alright, I am looking at the screen."

"Alright, now look at your search box and type in.... dubloo dubloo dobloo dot, TeamViewer.com."

"Alright.... www.teamviewer.com..."

"Have you finished ma'am?"

"Um yes... I have finished typing it up. Should I press enter now?" Luna asked.

"Yes, press enter and then tell me what you see on the screen." It took a while for the webpage to load but finally, it loaded up.

"Alright, the website has loaded up."

"Alright, very good ma'am. Now, do you see a button that says Download Now on your screen?" The technician asked over the phone. Looking at her screen, Luna took a few seconds but finally found the button.

"Yes, I see the button? Do I click it and download it?" She asked.

"Yes ma'am, click the button and download it. Then let me know when you have completed the installation."

"Alright."

After a while, the download was completed and the technician walked Luna through the whole process of connecting her computer to his computer. The process was fairly simple over the phone and now Luna found herself staring at her computer's command prompt screen. The technician typed some sort of command in and suddenly, the command prompt lit up with a bunch of commands and words that Luna did not know what they meant. After everything finished loading, the technician spoke again.

"Alright Ma'am, now do you see all of this on your screen?" He asked.

"Yes... What does all of this mean?" Luna asked, quite curious at the situation she found herself in.

"Ma'am, these are the hackers that have locked you out of your computer. They are right now stealing your informations and attempting to steal your banking account information." He said.

"What.... What can I do to fix it?" Luna asked, shocked at the revelation.

"We can fix this ma'am, you just need to pay the service fee of $300 United States dollars." The technician said.

"Do you accept Equestrian bits?"

"No ma'am we only take United States Dollars. Now, do you have an online banking account ma'am or do you have a store to go to and buy gift cards ma'am?"

This puzzled Luna, why would a certified technician asked for a money transfer in gift cards?

"No... I do not possess either." She said, pondering what to do about her situation. For a while, there was silence on the phone line until the technician asked again.

"Ma'am, did you hear me? I asked if you had access to online banking or gift cards?" He asked again, this time with a more assertive tone.

"I said I do not. Now, you will answer my questions Sir. Are you even an employee of Microsoft?" She asked, determined to put the guy in his place.

"Ma'am, I am a certified Microsoft technician. Now, you must pay the $300 or your information will be stolen by the hackers." He said.

"Then why do I get the feeling you are lying to me?" Luna pressed. She waited for a response but nothing came. Only when she looked at her computer screen did she see what was happening. The "technician" was opening up something called a "Syskey" and was typing something in the typing bars.

"What are you doing Sir?" Luna asked. No answer came.

"Sir, what are you doing to my computer?" She asked again. Still, no answer came. Only when the technician finished typing whatever he was typing in the Syskey box did he answer.

"Ma'am, your computer has been locked until you pay the $300 dollar service fee." He said plainly. After hearing this revelation, Luna could only say one thing.

"What."

"Ma'am, you must pay the $300 servicing fee or your computer will stay locked." Came the reply.

For a while, Luna did not answer. Her rage only growing with each passing second. When the technician asked if she was still there, Luna finally snapped and threw the phone with her magic at the computer screen, smashing it. She then proceeded to pick up the keyboard and smash it against the already cracked computer screen until Celestia came in and had to calm her very irate sister down. When Luna finally calmed down, she made a phone call using the land line to book a flight to India, determined to take down whoever tried to scam her.

Author's Note:

Alright, so... This story was literally one of those crazy ideas that randomly popped into my head. Funnily enough, I got the idea while watching a stream which saw scammers of all sorts having their own computers locked out (for good reason). Scamming is still a major thing people, and I suggest you all inform yourselves to not fall victim yourselves. If you have the set-up to do so, I encourage you all to take up scambaiting activities to take down these scamming pieces of shit. I have syskeyed about 2 or 3 already (albiet that was over a year ago) and I still try to contribute to the cause to fight back against them.

Now, general stuff. No I am obviously not dead and I am obviously not quitting. I am simply suffering a bit of writer's block on my main stories and typed this one up for my own sake and sanity and to at least push this out for you lot. The scammer's lines are actually things that they tend to say a lot. I was half tempted to include the typical Indian curse words that they throw out after their files are deleted but seeing Luna is the victim here, I went for a more casual dialog for those scamming sons of bitches. If you notice some odd dialog or possible "typos" in the scammer lines, they are intentionally put there. Any other actual typos, I missed those or auto correct screwed up again. As always, thanks for reading!

Comments

[Booster Spice]

Or run WINE and watch them go spare?

Id love to be able to run XP on PCTask 5, but theres still no platform I know of powerful enough yet due to code abuse.

Lets see, this laptop has worse specs than the Pi 4 and yet comes with Win 10, and the Pi 4 is a fraction the power of a top end smartphone.

So why can I access the net faster on the emulated 30 year old machine on that phone than the phone?

Sorry, just hate that remote access is active by default due to it making life easier for factory technicians, and has no security by default.

If you have to enable security and encryption, it isnt secure. The most secure system is one where you dont know its there.

[JustAnotherHistoryBuff]

10130627
I used to do my scambaiting on an Acer Aspire R15. Needless to say, it was hard to run a lot of necessary programs PLUS a discord call bot together with the mere 8 gigs of RAM that thing possess.

[Booster Spice]

10130631

Owwwww.

sorry, I just remember back in the 90s on the true net, running browser, email, chat, and torrents. On a machine with so little resources, your TV remote control is more powerful. Well, Sky remote. I really wish Id used the available neuralnet software back then for not just analyzing data, but analyzing what neural nets did, so that after this, the next 25 years, we could have neural nets that were 25 years more advanced, with todays processing power. Instead of apparently just throwing a million tmes the processing power at the same code, just bigger.

[JustAnotherHistoryBuff]

10130652
Oh, it's quite alright, really.

[Anonomis]

Seen someone go through this. They took over the computer and made things worse.

[JustAnotherHistoryBuff]

10130719
It is not a pleasant experience for the victims of these types of scams. Some have lost millions to Nigerian Bank Scams as well. Be thankful for those that fight against these scamming assholes. It makes things easy because a lot of them use Windows 7 (which includes the Syskey feature which is no longer used in Windows 10).

[Fetch]

Right before her tantrum...

Luna: Sir, if you do not unlock my computer, I, as Diarch of Equestria, shall have no choice but to declare this an act of terrorism. You have 30 seconds.
Scammer: What?
Luna: 20 seconds.
Scammer: You bluff.
Luna: I, Princess Luna of Equestria, proclaim that you are a terrorist, and thus shall be hunted to the ends of the planet. THIS, I COMMAND!
-Luna's phone was destroyed by the force of her Canterlot voice-

[JustAnotherHistoryBuff]

10131117
Lmao. I was tempted to throw in the RCV but I figured that the phone wouldn't be able to handle it so I opted for a more subtle, smash everything in a near Angry German Kid fashion ( if you get that old ass YouTube reference).

[Xavy T Drag]

I hate scammers.

[JustAnotherHistoryBuff]

10132305
Don't we all. It is still funny to get back at those assholes though.

[ThePinkedWonder]

I had that "virus alert" a few times, but only once did a laptop get locked by one of these scammers a few years ago.

As pissed as I was about that, having it locked and useless wasn't that big a deal on the whole. The laptop I used back then was acting slow and freezing too much, so I was already thinking of getting a new one anyway.

[JustAnotherHistoryBuff]

10141304
Well, at least something good came out of that experience. Word if advice, as shitty as Windows 10 can be at times, don't use Windows 7 because of the syskey feature. If you are gonna use Windows 7 just for the pop-up, use a virtual machine... Trust me, it is a lot better than having your actual PC locked.

[FIM Fiction]

I once interacted with such a scammer. When they asked for money, I explained to them that I was a bumrag hobo and was using a laptop from the dump. When they lacked my laptop, I phoned a hacker hobo pal of mine and had two hundred thousand dollars taken from the scammer. I got none of the money, but I did get the dude's name. Yeah, I'm talking about you, Daniel Shoemaker who lives in Montana!
Anyway, will there be a second or sequel to this, where Luna extracts her revenge?

[JustAnotherHistoryBuff]

10183233
Oh... That is in the works heheheheheh. I love fucking with those scammers.

[Pharaoh]

JUST WAIT A MOMENT

[Pharaoh]

10131117
Luna channeling someone?

[Fetch]

10259965
The Hasbroverse is properly connected. ;)

[Agent Fluffy]

I did a fanfic reading of your story for Friday the 13th this year! Enjoy! Youtube Reading