Brought to you by Niall Mulrine,
www.pcclean.ie
There have been numerous people in the locality subjected to bogus phone calls relating to fake viruses on their computer systems. The caller has an Indian accent in most cases, may tell you they are working in your country and have a victious name to blend in with the national customer eg. Joe Kelly or Jack Jackson are names that have been used. This has been occurring Worldwide now for quite some time, as far back as 2008 and an investigation in England by UK National Newspaper "The Guardian" has been conducted and cannot pin point the culprits but can say that one man, based in the city of Kota in Rajasthan, is behind the centres running the scams.
How does this happen?
It is believed that the caller gathers information from the phone book such as your name, address and contact phone number. The caller begins with requesting to speak to the person whose name is the printed name on the phone book and informs them that they are calling from a legit software company like Microsoft, Online PC Doctor and some ISP names that are the leaders in the country. They are contacting you, to inform you that they believe your computer to be at great risk due to some of the internet activity on your PC.
The user at stage does feel that it is a proper call, as they have a lot of information about them (which is freely found in the phonebook!!) and ask them to go to their Pc and run a few simple tasks on the computer. The tasks asked to perform are not the everyday routine for most computer users. One example of the task is, to run Task Manager to find if there are any processes running on the computer. The Task Manager has a list of all processes that are running on the computer that are informing the user what is working in the background and in the main windows. To someone who has not seen this before, it can look daunting. Therefore, seeing at least 10 processes running on the computer, gives the caller leverage to say that these are bad and will damage your computer. In reality, there is no issue with the PC. The caller will use scare mongering to launch you into a state of pure fear and anxiety about how safe your computer is. Now comes the hook.
The caller will inform you that it can be repaired to prevent further damage. An unsuspecting resident in Dublin got this call and was first offered to clean up the virus for a subscription fee of €129, but then began to push a two-year deal costing €249. This would give the pc owner a full year of remote support from a fully Microsoft certified technician. What happens next? The caller asks the owner to open a website that they will need to remotely log in to repair the pc, and enter a 6 digit code that they will dispense the owner with. Once this is carried out, the owner will see the caller moving the cursor on screen and opening different folders. They will download a rogue antivirus program. The program installs itself on your computer and purports to be a Microsoft anti-spyware program. It self-launches and appears to start running scans, coming up with various infected files. These are all fake results. Urgency sets in for the poor unsuspecting pc owner. The magic happens now. "Can you provide your credit card details for us to fully repair your machine. After this, they may ask you to hang up and they will call you when they are finished. Oops, now the pc is fully in the hands of this caller, as the pc owner thinks there is no point in hanging about watching this, as they don't understand it and leave it to the experts!!!
So what should be we do when this call comes to us? Ask them some basic questions;
* Do they know your name and address? Ask: "Who was it you wanted to speak to?"
* If so, are you in the phone book under that name and address?
* Are they using a particular name that's only on your credit card?
* Have you recently contacted your broadband provider or telephone provider?
* And if so, which company was it?
* Is there any other computer based transaction, repair, purchase or enquiry you made online or in store recently, and can you remember where it was?
Alarm bells should always ring when a stranger asks us for credit card details, whether they phoned us or stopped us in the street. Ask them for their full name, company name, email address and phone number and you will get back to them. Bring this information to the attention of your local Gardai or type their website into Whois.com to find out more details.
As Microsoft's name has been used in some of the calls, they have got involved in the highlighting of this scam. They have linked up with National Consumer Agency of Ireland Microsoft's to give people help and assistance with this.
Brought to you by Niall Mulrine, Navenny, Ballybofey, Co. Donegal, Ireland
www.pcclean.ie
