I had a phone call from an outfit calling themselves “Windows Support Department”. Apparently my machine is doing “malicious” things on the internet and they can help me solve these problems.

That was the spin. I told them I don’t have a Windows machine and they got ugly - calling me a liar that I was “wicked” and “evil”. The thing that bugged me was that they knew my address and told me that people would be round to “sort me out”.

Last time I had such a call, I got to the word “Mac” and they hung up.

The “we know where you live and are coming to get you” bit bothered me, so I called the Police who now have a log of the incident and an incident number. I’ve had robust discussions with callers in the past, but this is the first time such a threat has been made. The police told me that they wanted access to my computer and would hold bits of it to ransom. I told them I knew this as I’d heard about it before, it was the threat that I was bothered about. I was told not to worry. If anything happens again, phone them, quote the incident number and they’ll look to escalate it further if need be.

The only “malicious” thing my computer does on the Internet is not running Windows. Clearly I am denying honest, hardworking scammers an income. Maybe that’s why I’m “wicked” and “evil”.