Fake Technical Support warning !!

[David Santistevan]

As some of you know I run an IT services company here in Colorado. Over the last two weeks we have had two incidents of fake technical support security breaches and I wanted to give you all a heads up. This happens when you do a Google or some other search engine for technical support on some product. Lets say you are having trouble with QuickBooks so you go out and Google "QuickBooks technical support". You of course will get back a number of listing and of the listings at the top are PAID listings. Some of these listings are turning out to be fraudulent. When you go to their site they will look like the real enough and when you call they will sound legit. They will either offer to do the support for a fee or they will tell you that they need to evaluate your computer by running diagnostics to tell you what is wrong. Using a remote support utility like GotoAssist or WebEx etc. they will ask you to allow them to connect to your PC. Once they do that they can do anything. They can download anything including viruses and malware to your computer all the while telling you they are running diagnostics or checking out your PC.

The best way to avoid this is to pay attention, there wil be clues. For example how many times have you called for support and your get to someone immediately ready to help. Check the website and make sure it actually is for the company who owns your product. Be very selective about who you allow to remotely connect to your PC. Just because someone asks you to does not mean you should allow it. One of our customers called who they thought was Yahoo for support on Yahoo Mail. The support person at the other end told them he needed to connect up to their PC and run diagnostics. That does not make sense since Yahoo Mail is a web based email system. Have your antenna up and pay attention and you should be able to avoid the scams. Remember that once you give someone access to your PC they could potentiall gain acces to everything on it including passwords, bank acccounts and other sensitive information.

Dave

 

[Grimracer]

How about off topic on this one?

Grim

 

[Dasboatman]

Hey David,

David is a Great guy really helped me out with one of my PCs - Very Sharp. Well worth reading his statement and paying attention to it..

I thank you, and my PCs thank you. I had a call from someone posing as a "Senior Microsoft Software Engineer" called me out of the blue. He went away when I asked if he was calling to provide Help, or if he wanted to sell me something - the long distance line to India went silent. I called Microsoft Corporate - they said FRAUD, and suggested I down load Microsoft Security Essentials from their site. I don't like it as much as the Malwarebytes you made me aware of. CHEERS !!! Bob

 

[RonShaw]

Thanks for the heads-up David. Talking about tech support, I read an article not long ago that listed the top 10 funniest tech support calls. My favorite one was from a little old lady that had just purchased a new Dell computer and was extremely upset how after only a week her automatic cup holder had broken. Yes, better known as the DVD drive to the rest of us!!!......

 

[David Santistevan]

Welcome to my life! This is how I spend every day!

 

[Joe Petro]

When I was in IT we were going to make a tee shirt of the top ten IT questions.

Number one was "what's my password?"

We did encounter lots of ID 10T errors...

Joe