No doubt you will have heard of spam, phishing, viruses and trojans by now. After all they are constantly a threat to our security and it is the main reason why we have firewalls and anti-viruses on our computers. Threats are not entirely computer based though you may be also subject to telephone calls from people pretending to be from your ISP or even from Microsoft themselves! Be aware of the scammer!
My first encounter was back in March when I got a phone call from a confused neighbour who asked me to have a look at her computer because someone had telephoned her saying that she had an error on it. She was asked to switch on her computer and was directed to the logs where of course there was a little red warning sign. They went on to tell her that the error would wipe her hard disk and render her computer utter useless unless she was to go to this website. The website was LogMeIn which of course is a reputable remote desktop company. It wasn’t until they asked her for a fee for them to fix her computer that the alarm bells started ringing. She immediately said that she wasn’t going to pay for anything and she took their phone number and got in contact with me.
I also received a call in August from an asian guy claiming that he was from my ISP and that Microsoft had got in touch with them to tell me that there were errors on my computer. I went along with it just to find out what they had to say after all I run Linux. This time they directed me to a different website to download ammyy which is legitimate remote desktop software. When it come to the payment I just said no and he said well you don’t want me to fix your computer then I said no. Eventually he told me t F*ck off and hung up.
The point in this post is to simply get the message across that if you receive any phone calls saying that they are from your ISP or Microsoft then do not entertain them. Never ever give your credit card details out to anyone that contacts you, even if they say ‘Can you confirm the credit card number that we have on file for you?‘ Once they have got your credit card details then they will of course start defrauding you.
On another note there is a company that keeps phoning us saying that they are from sky and that our warranty has expired and it will cost £65+ for the year. When questioned they could not tell us that they were officially calling from sky, which could only mean one thing. This company is not official endorsed by sky and they are using sky’s good name to sell you a warranty package. Whether or not the company is official it is still using the sky branding to illegally sell it’s products. Be aware!
Have you ever received a phone call from a scammer or have you ever been fooled by one? Have you had any other so called company that has contacted you trying to extract information? Please feel free to comment.
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