In his latest exposé, security reporter Brian Krebs details the dirty tricks often perpetrated by telephone tech support services. In particular, Brian highlights one instance where such a service has been clearly misleading potential consumers by falsely claiming to be a Microsoft Certified Partner:
“You can’t make this stuff up: A tech support company based in the United States that outsources its work to India says its brand is being unfairly maligned by — wait for it…..tech support scammers based in India. In an added twist, the U.S.-based tech support firm acknowledges that the trouble may be related to its admittedly false statements about being a Microsoft Certified Partner — the same false statements made by most telephone-based tech support scams.
Tech support scams are, unfortunately, an extremely common scourge. Most such scams are the telephonic equivalent of rogue antivirus attacks, which try to frighten consumers into purchasing worthless security software and services. Both types of scams try to make the consumer believe that the caller is somehow associated with Microsoft or with a security company, and each caller tries to cajole or scare the consumer into giving up control over his or her PC.”
Read the rest of Brian’s enlightening article, including the response from the tech support service accused of making false claims, here: ‘Microsoft Partner’ Claims Fuel Support Scams … a must read.
I recently had a friend drop off her PC with me for a 2-day cleaning after her husband got one of those calls, paid $500 for the software and tech support services for a year. What they got was an infected PC with popups that prevented you from doing anything, and programs that would no longer update. Between MRT, Malwarebytes and a bootscan using Avast … I managed to get the trojan and a massive number of PUPs off the PC so I could update it and get everything working again. The scans alone took HOURS!
There are far too many people in the world that believe every scam ever perpetrated on the WEB as true. Telephone scams have been running for over 100 years and they STILL catch people. There are some people that have gotten scammed several times and still didn’t learn.
My granddaughter was using her grandmother’s computer and anounced that she “won a free laptop”. I yelled back to her “don’t touch anything”. I called her over to my computer and we went to the same website she was on. I then showed her what would happen if she had followed through on collecting the free laptop. She now knows that free does NOT mean FREE. The time I spent cleaning my computer was time I considdered well spent. I also saved myself from being blamed for MY granddaughter messing up her grandmother’s computer. Funny how that works out, when my granddaughter does something bad she’s MY granddaughter and when she does something good she’s HER granddaughter and if we’re buying something she’s OUR granddaughter.