Thread: Microsoft’s Warning on Fake Windows Support Calls

On June 16, 2011 Microsoft has warnedits loyal customer base to take precaution if someone call’s themon behalf of Microsoft. The company has taken this step to alerttheir customers from the scammers who are now calling up theircustomers and duping them to put malwares in their computers or arecharging for unnecessary things on behalf of Windows. According tosecurity experts rumors of such happenings are around for at leastone year but have not been taken care of.

Microsoft has been sponsoring surveysthroughout the United States of America, United Kingdom as well asIreland and Canada. It has been reported that according to a surveyconducted by them, 15% of their users confirmed of anonymous calls onbehalf of Windows. The undesired calls have been coming frompranksters who often pose as the computer support technicians ofWindows. These fraudsters claim that they have called up to offersecurity checks for their computers.

The most often tried trick by crooks isto let the customers believe that their computer is badly infected byVirus. The consumers are often shown the Windows log which displaysthe low level errors. Seeing this, the customer gets convinced thattheir systems requires immediate protection, and thus download themalicious software offered by these con artists. In a few instances,technicians also accessed the customers PC remotely.

The crook then asks the customers topay for their service. Often the customers end up paying for themalicious software which is of no use to them. In fact it does agreat deal of harm to them by stealing their sensitive accountinformation and more. Sean Richmond, a senior technologyconsultant for Sophos said in an interview today that these crooksare taking benefit of the ignorance of the customers. Thereforecustomers must be well aware of their false tricks.

Adding further, Richmond told that thefraudsters often ask the customer’s to open the Window’s eventlog, which records all the compelling events of the computerincluding program errors. These errors are told as virus to theconsumers who get frightened on hearing it. Unfortunately, around 22% of the peoplewho had received anonymous calls have fallen a prey to these crooks.Microsoft claims that every victim lost at least 5 due to thesedirty tricks. Apart from financial loss, they even lost theirpasswords, account information and other associated problems.

Richard Saunders quoted, "Criminalshave proved once again that their ability to innovate new scams ismatched by their ruthless pursuit of our money.” He added thattill date, the scammers have limited their fraud to only Englishspeaking countries but will expand it sooner or later to non-Englishregions too. Paul Ducklin, Sophos' head of technology for its Asianand Pacific division said that these dirty tricks might very soonstart affecting Mac users as well.

Richmond agreed with Paul and said,“The demographics for Mac users is that they have more money towaste, so I wouldn't doubt that they would become a target."