[Anonymouse]

I got a phone call from a company saying they work with Microsoft, telling me my PC had a trojan - specifically winlogon.exe. But they sounded legit because they knew the Windows license number, which I'm fairly sure they couldn't have obtained from anyone but the people I bought my laptop from, PC Specialist.

I then spent a nerve-wracking half-hour or so surrendering control of my laptop while they did various things to clean up my system, terminate foreign network connections and restart Windows services allegedly disabled by Russian hackers. I've also paid them a sum of dosh for network security software; I presume I'll receive an email link to download it.

Has anyone else experienced this? If so, have I been conned? Is there any way a Windows license number can be fraudulently obtained remotely?

Or am I being paranoid?

But I can't help wondering how these supposed hackers got winlogon.exe past Norton. Plus I've been running https protocol for months and I now have a VPN.

So what precisely have I done: the smart thing, or the bloody stupid thing? Just in case, I've changed my most critical passwords, plus the passcodes on my debit and credit cards.

- I've just looked up 'remote access scams', and now I'm pretty sure I did something stupid.