Monday, March 02, 2009

Chat

Over the past month or so I've had the dubious pleasure of communicating/chatting with a group of Indian support personnel in order to render my computer safe from intrusions.
Like many others I have the Norton/Symantec Antivirus program to prevent bugs, viruses and worms being introduced into my computer via the internet. When the Antivirus program is working properly it has a green tick on the icon, but suddenly it changed to a red cross, indicating that it was no longer working. I found that I could use the "one click" link to have my Norton Antivirus program corrected on-line in real time.
It connected me to an Indian call center, where the personnel, with obviously Indian names, asked me politely if I would allow them to "take-over" my computer so they could rememdy the problem. I had to open a specific site with a "connectme" suffix, and then some programs automatically downloaded. Then they could investigate the status of the program in my computer and take any actions they deemed necessary while I looked on. All the time I could chat with them about the status of the computer:
These are the things they did:
1. I was given a program called "Intelligent updater" (on 18/12/08), but the AV program worked only for a short time after that.
2. Then on 18, 19 and 20/1/09 three people made changes, first removing my Antivirus 08 and replacing it with the 09 version, then removing my Webroot Spymaster program, because it was/might interfere with the Norton spyware program (although I had been using both for several years without apparent problem) and then completely removing Antivirus09 and reinstalling it anew.
3. Then on 5 occasions recently I received a message "Symantec service framework encountered a problem and needed to close," following which on re-booting Antivirus seemed to work OK, until it showed a big red cross and turned off completely ("your computer is at risk!) Once again I contacted "one click" and this time something was done to the "framework" and another large program (54 Mb) was downloaded.
6. Then when I ran a scan of my computer using the apparently much-repaired AV program, it failed to complete, but four times it suddenly stopped and the program icon disappeared from my computer. So I contacted the "one-click" chat again, and this time after the tech said it was fixed I asked him to wait while I did a scan (this takes time) but it failed again. So he finally did several more things, clicked a box to "automatic" and now it seems to work.
On the one hand this is a great service, since I had no idea what to do (nor apparently did some of them) and I would have been left without security protection without this support (which by the way I had to have paid for my subscription in order to have this service). So now I feel safe again (but for how long?)
The word "chat" is a Hindi word for a fast-food delicacy that you can buy off small carts along the roadside in Indian cities. It consists of various kinds of nuts and perfumed sweetmeats rolled in a leaf and eaten as a refreshment. Because people who stop to buy chat, stand and talk briefly, somehow the British picked up the word to mean a short conversation. I've had too many chats lately.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home