I’m still having a lot of reports from clients regarding a scam that involves an agent phoning from a company that claim to be Microsoft or Microsoft Solutions or something similar. They ask if you have noticed if your PC is running slowly recently or they go straight in and say they have information telling them your PC or laptop is infected with so many ‘bugs’ or viruses.
A lot of my clients have been savvy enough to put the phone down at this point but others have taken it a bit further and allowed the agent to have remote access to their PC.
From here extortion in one form or another is often attempted. Whether it be loading malicious software on the PC and charging to remove it or changing passwords and again charging to ‘unlock’ the PC.
A quick Google finds lots of great informative articles about this, see below for a link to Microsoft’s article regarding this. It is a worry that there isn’t more made of this as I fear a lot of trusting people could be taken advantage of by such a scam.
In my experience getting hold of Microsoft on the phone is hard enough, let alone them phoning you to check if there are any problems! So my advice would be if anyone calls you randomly claiming to be a professional, ask someone you trust to take a look.
Microsoft’s own article regarding this: http://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/security/online-privacy/avoid-phone-scams.aspx
Herts Computer Services was set up by Iain Murray to supply straight forward IT support to everyone according to their needs; individuals, consultants working from home and small to medium sized businesses. 