Archive for the ‘News’ Category

In follow up to the last post regarding the Telephone PC Repair scam we advised people about a few days ago we are now pleased to announce that the West Sussex County Times newspaper has also began highlighting this scam to the general public in the area. If anyone experiences this or similar scams Becky Churcher of the West Sussex County Times would like to hear from you. She can be contacted on 01403 751200.

In follow up we thought we would also make people aware of a second ploy being used by these fake technicians to gain access to peoples PC’s and bank details.

Some people have been told to follow a set of instructions by the person on the telephone which ultimately leads them to the “Event Viewer” console within Windows. Once there, the bogus technician asked them to check the ‘system’ and ‘security’ logs to see if any “warnings” or “errors” were present. When the people in question seen that there was infact some warnings and errors present, the guy on the telephone then told them this was proof that they had a dangerous virus on their system. They then went onto to tell the people that they could fix the problem right away for them if they paid a certain amount of money via credit card and allowed them remote access into their systems.

These logs, which are referred to, will normally always contain error or system warnings, even on a brand new laptop or PC. A warning or error can be created by something as simple as your anti-virus scanner trying to do an update when your computer is not connected to the Internet. Just because the logs on a computer lists errors and warnings does not necessarily mean the computer has a fault or a virus. This is purely a scare tactic to try to get people to divulge their bank / card details and let these bogus technicians have access to their systems. Please be vigilant.

Just thought we would highlight a new scam that seems to be going around the Horsham Area at the moment. A few people, including myself, have received telephone calls from a supposed company claiming to be accredited to Microsoft. They basically call you up and tell you they are from Microsoft and that they have noticed your computer is running slow. They then start to give you a whole run down of things they think may be happening to your computer (things like: you have a slow Internet connection, your computer is running slower than normal, your computer is sending private information over the Internet, you have a virus etc). They tell you they have detected these things happening and that they are calling to fix the problem for you FOC. (At this point I asked they guy I was speaking to who the company was and was told Microsoft. When I told him I was a technician with affiliation to Microsoft the Indian guy (whom I was speaking to) put the phone down on me.)

Some other people I have spoken to unfortunately have believed what these guys are telling them and have not questioned their authenticity. As a result they were then told to download a small program which gave the so called technicians control of their computers and then most found within a very short period of time their computer had been hacked into and details had been stolen, viruses had been activated and some were even locked out of their own systems.

If anyone calls you up and tells you they have found something wrong with your computer, or that they have detected a virus on it, they are lying to you. No-one can diagnose or monitor faults from a remote location (or over the Internet) unless you personally have installed programs onto your system to allow them to do so. At times a qualified technician may offer you remote assistance (which would require you to download and install a small program onto your system – but this would only be at your request.) Please make your friends aware of this scam as many people in our community have already been hit by this and similar things.

Well, we eventually got around to it and the new Horsham Users Forum is open. 

Please feel free to use this area to pass on any tips / tricks you may have to other users in Horsham. Please note: initially all posts will be moderated by an administrator.

Have fun.