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Phone Scams

Had a call from an Indian sounding technical center? Been told that they have been informed that your PC has a virus affecting one of their servers, if yes to any of these, just simply hang up. This is a phone scam and they are trying to get money out of you. In fact, don't even entertain any conversation from any of these operatives, if you are ever unsure about the security of your PC - get in contact with a professional, G17 for example, or take your PC into PC World, anything but don't let these call centers persist on diagnosing your PC.

In these types of scams, there are various stages of impending trouble:

  1. You receive a call and they direct you to a screen on your PC and ask you to say how many entries you see - if you reveal say, 30 errors, they reply "My god, you are heavily infected" then offer support. - if you hang up at this stage, you are safe
  2. You are directed to a website and asked to download some software so they can access your PC - danger, you are getting near the point of no return
  3. You run this software and then see the caller moving your mouse - you've pretty much had it
  4. They confirm you are heavily infected and offer a trial version of antivirus, or the option to purchase immediately - your doomed
  5. You purchase the software and install on your PC - from this point I would recommend you turn the PC off - get help as soon as you can, or before you turn the PC back on again. Contact your bank and try to get the payment cancelled - at best, have your card stopped.

Solution

  1. Hang up straight away!
  2. If you installed software or allowed access to files - bring your PC to G17, depending on the type of program installed or files modified by our friendly caller, there may be a chance of a quick removal and clean including check to make sure all traces of the caller are not on your PC
  3. If the program is embedded into the operating system, a mob up will be attempted but 9/10 it is far better to back up user files, format the hard drive, reload the operating system, virus check and reload all applications. This takes time, will cost you more money and is very inconvenient to you.

 

For more information on the above related scam, please look at the following links:

The Guardian - Article in the subject

Action Fraud - been affected - then report it

From the Horses Mouth - A blog set up by an ex-employee of the company running these scams. Full details on the process and how to get yourself out of a tricky situation. Not sure how long this blog will stay active as s/he is taking a bit of a risk - but worth reading.