News, tips & humour from Southern Cross IT
A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing – Don’t get Scammed
Wolf in Sheep's Clothing
A number of particularly nasty scams have emerged over the years involving computers and the internet.
This latest one is different. It is not carried out by autonomous viruses that infect your computer… or an email from your bank asking for your login details. It’s not an email from a “friend” that is stuck abroad without any money… or a fake website that takes your credit card details…
This scam is different in that it involves a phone call, from a real person. The scam can play out a number of different ways but the most common happens a bit like this:
- You get a phone call from a pleasant-sounding foreign person, in a busy call-centre, offering to speed up your computer or fix some problems. (sometimes they will claim to be phoning from BT or another third party and that they have sanctioned the call).
- The caller then talks you through a few steps, often showing you random folders of inane systems files, that they claim are viruses or files that are slowing down your computer.
- (Optional step) The caller may now explain that some of these “viruses” are very serious or that there is a very large problem which is to serious to fix for free, so they will conveniently take payment over the phone to remove these fake viruses.
- The caller then asks you to install remote-control software so that they can control your computer and clear out these folders and fake viruses. They will also install some clever cleaning software (sometimes the same that we use) as well as some of their own software, to help speed up your computer.
- Job done, they hang up and everything seems great. Your computer is working faster than it has done ages and they seem to have fixed the problem… until one month later your credit card has been used to buy all sorts of strange things around the world, your bank account has been emptied and your identity stolen.
What did you miss? While they were cleaning up your computer they installed a little program that runs silently on your computer, reporting all your activity to criminals who have been using the information for all sorts of illegal activity.
The moral of the story: Don’t let anyone you don’t know or trust have access to your computer, remotely or otherwise. Letting someone else use your computer is tantamount to handing over all of your personal information.
If you need help from an IT professional always use a reputable UK company; Ideally a limited company with credentials that can be checked like… wait for it… shameless marketing link coming right up…