It was six months after getting his first Dell laptop that Martin McCoy got a suspicious call.

“We’ve been monitoring activity from our computer owners and noticed some unusual activity on your computer,” says McCoy.

He let the scammer take control of his computer to “fix” the problem.

“Sure enough, my mouse started moving, he told me it was going to be moving, and so I’m watching it and I’m thinking, not real sure, not real sure.”

He ended the phone call, unplugged his laptop, even took the battery out, and called the number that came with his computer. That expert searched the computer for an hour, said he found no malware and no sign that the scammer took anything.

But even though the expert got an hour with his computer to check everything out, that doesn’t necessarily mean that there isn’t something else lurking underneath.

“They could have already installed something and it’s just lying dormant, it’s just waiting to be released,” says Kristina Barrett with the Computer Crew.

Barrett says never trust someone calling you claiming to be an expert…and to be on the safe side, download security software—even on your smaller devices.

“You can get it from Norton, McAfee, any of those things that offer a multi-device, it covers all of those,” says Barrett.

As for McCoy, who keeps his bank account info on the laptop, he made a beeline for his bank.

When it was all done, I went down to the bank and told them to put a flag on my account. You know, it’s scary,” says McCoy.

If you think you’ve got malware on your computer, if it’s acting up a little and acting suspicious, take it to someplace like the Computer Crew so they can run a full diagnostics on it. It’ll take between two and three hours, but you’ll have peace of mind.