Computer Help for Seniors in Des Moines: How to Tell Real Support from Scam

A window opens on the screen. It says the computer is infected and gives you a number to call. Or the phone rings first and the person on the other end already seems to know something is wrong with your machine.

I get calls about both, from people around the Des Moines metro and from their sons and daughters, often from out of state. The search for computer help for seniors in Des Moines usually starts right here, with somebody trying to work out who is safe to let in.

The test is whether you can see what is happening and stop it. How official the caller sounds is not a test at all.

The three questions that settle it

A real remote session passes all three of these. A scam fails all three, however professional the voice on the phone is.

Who generated the code

You should have to read a code off your own screen and give it to the technician. You generate it, not them. If someone can connect without that, or tells you to install something and then reads you numbers they supply, stop there.

Who is watching

Your screen stays on. You watch every click. A real technician narrates the work while doing it. Being asked to look away, or to leave the room, or to let the screen go dark, is reason enough to end the session.

Who can end it

Shut the window. The session stops and so does the access. No legitimate job needs a connection left open to your computer overnight.

Those three are about procedure rather than politeness. You can run them on me as easily as on anyone else, which is rather the point of them.

Why sounding official proves nothing

The numbers are worth knowing, and not because older adults are gullible. They are not, and most of the people I work with are more careful than their own children. It is worth knowing because this is an industry.

In its 2025 report, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center recorded 201,266 complaints from people over 60 and $7.748 billion in losses, up 37 percent and 59 percent on the year before. Tech support fraud made up 21,333 of those complaints and just over a billion dollars of those losses. The FBI's own description of the method is plain enough: criminals pose as technology support representatives and offer to fix problems that do not exist.

People who do this for a living are good at sounding official. Scripts, hold music, case numbers, a badge number if you ask for one. None of that is evidence of anything. The three questions are.

Where the test runs out

It is a narrow test and it has edges worth knowing.

It only covers remote sessions. If somebody is coming into the house, you need different questions: exactly who is arriving, what it will cost before they start, and whether you can reach the same person again next week. A new machine that needs setting up on the kitchen table is an in-person job, and the code test has nothing to say about it.

It also tells you nothing about whether the person is any good. A safe session and a competent one are two different things.

And it does not work backwards. If they called you, the test is beside the point, because the first move was theirs. Hang up, then ring a number you looked up yourself.

Who you get when you call

When you call, you get me. No queue, no script, and no new technician each time you ring.

I tell you the price first, so no bill turns up that you have not agreed to. The consultation is free and basic remote support is $30 for the first hour.

Most of it is ordinary work. Clearing out malware, getting a slow computer moving again, and it rarely takes as long as people fear.

My own remote sessions pass all three questions above.

In person, I cover Clive, West Des Moines, Des Moines, Urbandale, Windsor Heights, Waukee, Johnston, Grimes, Ankeny, Altoona, Norwalk and Pleasant Hill. Remotely, anywhere.

Call or text (515) 339-8780 and tell me what the screen is doing.

If you have already let somebody in

This happens, and it happens to careful people.

Disconnect the machine from the internet first. Then get somebody you chose to look at it, rather than anybody who contacted you. If money moved, report it at ic3.gov, which is where the figures above come from and where the reports actually go.

Then call me, or call somebody else entirely. The part that matters is that you picked.