Tell us what’s on your mind
Indian scammers forced me to give up landline
For me, two news stories in Issue 670 were connected on a personal level. First, on page 7, you explained how Indian police had raided over 70 call centres targeting Brits (why is it always us?) with scams. Good for them. Then a few pages later, in ‘Question of the Fortnight’, you quoted the figure that landline calls fell from 103 billion minutes in 2012 to 32 billion in 2022.
We scrapped our landline just before the pandemic because the only people who ever seemed to phone us were Indian scammers. They were inviting us over for dinner, but impersonating every company you could think of: Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Google, Intel etc. I always hung up within seconds and never gave the slightest indication that I might be gullible enough to be conned, but still the calls kept coming.
In the end me and my wife told all our friends and family that we were ditching the landline, and told them to use video chat or WhatsApp instead. It’s what most of them were using already, so it was no great upheaval. Sadly, I expect the scammers have moved on to pestering some other potential victim.
Martin Dickinson
We need UK petition to extend Windows 10 support
I hope some UK campaigners can repeat the US petition calling for Microsoft to extend support for Windows 10 beyond 2025 (Issue 670, page 7). If it doesn’t take action, we’re heading for an environmental disaster.
Millions of users were told by Microsoft that Windows 10 would be the final operating system, and so have refused on principle to upgrade to 11. Many users who wanted to upgrade haven’t been able to because of Microsoft’s ridiculously strict technical requirements.
Figures show that over 70 per cent of computers run Windows 10 – that’s over a billion machines. Come October 2025, many of these will need replacing. It’ll be a big number, even if you subtract those that will – as the deadline looms – be upgraded to 11, or possibly 12 if it’s out by then.
Where are all these redundant machines going to go? It’s such a waste. They’re capable of doing what their owners want: print documents, send emails, browse the web etc. They don’t need Windows 11 for that. As a happy Windows 10 user, I’m content with the fact that it won’t get many more features. Fair enough. But I’m outraged that it won’t receive any security updates after October 2025. Show me a petition against this and I’ll sign it.
Douglas Pla
