The scammers can get pretty creative. In addition to the phone calls, awhile ago I received an email that stated that they ran a free scan of my PC and found hundreds of problems, and that I could have the problems fixed by clicking on their link. I wonder how many people fall for stuff like this and then worry.
For what it's worth, one of my son's is a computer forensic investigator for a midwestern state's Department of Justice, and he formerly did identity theft investigations. I asked him about which of the major security companies were worth subscribing to, including the very advertised PCMatic which claims to protect against ransomware. He advised me to save my money and not subscribe to any of them, and just rely on Windows Defender (which is free) and use common sense by avoiding questionable websites. He said all of those years when I was paying McAfee, Norton or Kaspersky were probably just money thrown away. He added that ransomware on personal computers, as opposed to some business computers, was very rare and the ransom demanded often only $100. He said a better investment was some backup program (I use Carbonite) to protect against even this small probability.
