New scam, beware!
NEW SCAM
Protecting your identity
A few weeks ago someone brought in a desktop with a desperate look on his face. He was pale due to a phone call the previous day.
He told me that he received a phone call from a computer business and they told him his computer is infected. They easily convinced him to make a remote session and they showed him hundreds of viruses on the computer.
At that point, my friend got suspicions and he pulled the plug – quite literately!
Now he came to my office to ask me what the call was about, what the people accessed and what he has to do next.
I explained that unfortunately this is not the first time we have received such a call. The person who called is not calling from a legitimate business, he may have used a real remote support program and what they generally show is the event log which happens to have a lot of red “x” ‘s, so it’s an easy scare.
The tricky question is, what else did they do?
Unfortunately we can not know without a doubt what exactly they did and therefore some will sleep better by changing all their passwords.
What is this all about?
This is a classical scam revamped for our technologically advanced society.
Therefore, what can you take from these experiences?
If you get a phone call from someone telling you that you have a virus, be wary – check the number on Google to see if the number comes up as a scam.
Do not believe someone if they call up and say they are from your anti-virus program.
Once on the topic of computer safety, here are some computer safety tips:
Do not open links from within your email. Rather, go directly to the website from within your browser.
Type the website address for all your financial sites; do not rely on the search engine (since there can be phishing sites with similar names).
When doing updates, make sure you are downloading the latest version from the developer’s website and not a third party site.
If someone is pressuring you into making a quick decision, be wary!
