Well, whaddya know?
Arthur Nelson makes a discovery
I’m now in my second day of having my laptop back from the computer repair shop around the corner. I do promise you that little would have given me more pleasure this morning than to have no reason to blog any further about my ‘screen cleaning’ incident of Saturday and its aftermath.
Sadly, I am not in that happy position.
Last night, when I came to the laptop to do a bit of online research, I noticed something.
Although, upon the face of it, my machine is set up as before, there are one or two changes that I had not previously registered.
When I originally bought my laptop, from an Asian IT expert recommended by my brother in Wandsworth, it was custom-built … rather than an off-the-shelf (already supplied with standard software packages by Microsoft or whomever) version of the type you’d buy in somewhere like John Lewis.
Amongst other items, it boasted a McAfee security software system.
Well, it doesn’t any longer. Not only has my little man in the computer repair shop around the corner – as part of his efforts to ‘check and remove a virus from’ my laptop – removed any trace of my McAfee software, he or one of his workers has installed not only something called Avast Free Anti-Virus software, but also VIC Media Player, IMG CD Burn and iTunes.
He didn’t ask my permission to un-install my McAfee software, nor indeed did he ask permission to install Avast Free Anti-Virus in its place, still less the other three software packages mentioned above … none of which I am familiar with, need, or even intend ever to use.
What is it with these people?
Have they ‘taken over’ my laptop, so that they can monitor my private emails on behalf of MI5 and/or check on which internet sites I browse? Have they installed a ‘time bomb’ catastrophe software that – at a moment of their choosing, or perhaps of ‘M’ in Whitehall – will suddenly erupt and instantly destroy all my ‘saved’ data and documents?
Who knows?
I shall be visiting the shop at some point today, if I can find the time, and attempt to discover exactly what is going on.
