TIFU by upgrading my Dad's Laptop to Windows 10...

You might think your dad has no idea about what is going on, although I've run into scamware on computers like what your father has experienced. At first, It sounds like he just doesn't understand what Cortana does and he's just an old man who is out of touch with technology. Let me explain...

There is scamware in the wild, already on the PC that waits till you update to Windows 10. Usually the scamware will pretend to be Cortana, although it isn't. A remote user (the scammer) will ask for passwords, phone numbers, etc... through an interface that looks like Cortana, but is actually a chat. The same malware may also make the screen look as if the GPU (Graphics Processor for the screen) is broken, although it is just part of the scam and entirely within software.

If the scammer gets your phone number they will eventually phone you over VoIP from some 3rd world country, get you to look in event viewer and see all the "errors" and issues which are usually pretty normal to see in event viewer. They usually attempt to get the victim to pay a service fee to fix the issue by giving their credit card over the phone. This is the classic "Technical Support from Windows" combined with scamware pretending to be Cortana.

Make sure your dad didn't give away any important information to the scammer or the scamware pretending to be Cortana(chat) . You might also want to refresh Windows 10 on the laptop or any other machines you have on the same local network. Otherwise you might want to run something like Malware Bytes. Other PCs in the house were also infected.

One of the things I noticed was install files for questionable software to "speed up" the computer, which is where I think the malware got installed. A lot of these applications are useless and aren't malicious themselves but work as droppers where actual malware can be uploaded and installed.

Anyways, that's just my two cents. There is nothing wrong with Windows 10 in this regard, but an already infected computer upgrading to Windows 10 can cause this type of scamware to activate.

Be careful what you download and run with administrator privileges on Windows.

/r/tifu Thread