PC Virus SCAM - Warning "TeamViewer"

[markiesla]

Hi guys,

 

Firstly - apologies if this should be posted on another forum...

 

Just to give the heads up on PC Virus phone scam

 

Please read the following extract from one of the PC Advisor forums. I have just had a similar call.

 

"I just received a phone call from someone who I guess was in India who told me that they were a Microsoft Support Agency and had detected a serious fault on my computer.

 

I realised at once that it was a start of some sort of scam - but decided that I would go along and see where he wanted to lead me out of curiosity.

 

I must admit the devil in me rose to the surface and for more than 30 minutes I played dumb and got him to repeat every instruction several times - made numerous "mistakes", had difficulty finding tabs, buttons etc and could detect he was getting exasperated by my slowness.

 

He got me to navigate to event viewer, then filtered it to Errors and Warnings and assured me that the display of errors and warnings was what they had detected and were caused by a strong virus that my virus programme could not put right.

 

I thanked him for his kind assistance and told him that I would download and run several internet based malware scanners and cure the problem myself.

 

You could hear the panic in his voice and he appealed to me to let their programme do it. I told him that I suspected that he wasn't real and it was some sort of scam and only relented when he promised that there was no money involved and if I opened their website I would be able to see they were genuine.

 

He asked me to use Google and enter Teamviewer in the search box - which of course opened to the web page of TeamViewer who sell software that enables remote control of your computer. He asked me to click on the button for "Join a session" and download their programme to enable him to fix my problem.

 

More than 45 minutes had now elapsed and I thanked him for his trouble - told him I had bookmarked "their" site and would do it later when I had more time. I do believe he swore at me in some foreign tongue.

 

Full article at Forums - Telephone & Internet Scam - PC Advisor

 

Regards

[Taupotreeman]

Had a few of those here in NZ except the accents were American and they were trying to get you to pay to remove the virus via credit card. Several got quite aggressive when challenged and then slammed the phone down but they did manage to get some people hook line and sinker.

[markiesla]

Indeed, this is the 2nd one I have had in as many months. The 1st one I said - I worked in IT and the "line went dead" - so today I decided to go along with it and see how far we would get.

 

It's the less PC aware people I feel sorry for.

 

My father-in-law got caught with the popup virus warning when broiwsing the web scam. He didn't want to disturb me at work and so clicked on the button to download the software - arrgghhhhhh!!!!!

 

I have always said to him - it is better to disturb me for 5 minutes than me repair his PC - which will easily take more than 5 minutes :D