Scam Warning: Microsoft Global Tech Support
'
Received a phone call from the above 'company' earlier this evening. Their patter and MO was exactly as described in the article below.It sounded as though it was from an Indian call centre. They wanted access to my computer in order to put the problem right. As I had never heard of them I declined their offer and then googled the scam. Don't know if they are targetting this area but thought I would just make fellow patterers aware of this scam.
April 16 2010, 3:10 pm
In the line of private detective work we regularly hear about cons and scams. Some will get found out quite early on, others will stay under the radar for quite some time and are eventually brought to an end. However, perhaps the worst kind of scam is one that comes and goes. Some of you may have already had this, it has been around a while but it seems to be rearing its ugly head again.
You get a call claiming to be to Microsoft Global Tech Support or similar. They tell you that they have detected that you have received malware on the computer and they will put you through to a tech who can sort it out. Another guy comes on and asks you to go to your computer and takes you through to your event viewer. This will show errors that have occurred on your system. So far so plausible. But the whole point is that everybody at some time will have these errors but they claim they have a solution but they need to take over your computer to ‘sort it out’.
BIG RED FLAG – Don’t let anybody you don’t know take over your computer remotely!
If you let these guys in they will load on software which will cause serious problems. They will then try and scam you for money to get the software to work. But if you’ve got this far you’ve totally had it. If you pay – and it seems the amounts are £150 – £200 for the ‘upgrade’ it still won’t work. And they have your credit card details and have had access to all the data on your computer – just use your imagination what this can mean.
This scam is being operated out of Pakistan and India. If at any time you want to call a halt they’ll happily give you a name and UK number to call back on. In some cases they will even refer you to a website which looks genuine.
Don’t fall for it. It is feasible that when you get an application crash and you report it to Microsoft that Microsoft could link the IP address to any software that you might have registered with them which might have included your telephone from the same PC. But if they went to all that trouble why couldn’t they tell me what operating system I was using? There is no way any call like this could be coming from anybody authorised by Microsoft to do so. There is a private investigator in all of us, some might call it intuition or instinct
