It appears that fraudsters have turned to using bogus support calls to people in an attempt to hijack those people’s computers according to a report by the CEO of Trusteer, apparently using the likes of Microsoft to convince the end user the fraudster is genuine.
According to the CEO of Trusteer, Mickey Boodaei, they recently received a report from a Rapport user that claimed they had got a phone call from someone that claimed to be from Microsoft Windows Support and the caller was to help her due to error messages from her computer.
Apparently though the caller wasn’t from Microsoft Windows Support but tricked the customer into allowing him to gain access to the computer and proceeded to con the customer into purchasing bogus security solutions.
The bogus fraudster showed the customer a long list of viruses and transferred her to a supervisor that apparently tried to sell her a 300 security app. Fortunately the customer ended the call without handing over any personal information such as credit card details.
The Rapport customer however was worried that her computer was vulnerable to future attacks and contacted Trusteer’s help desk and they worked with the customer to ensure her PC wasn’t infected. Trusteer has recently added an awareness centre to their Rapport secure web access software, which gives info about recent scams and security alerts.
The moral of the story is I guess never trust anyone on the phone who can’t prove who they are and never part with your personal details over the phone unless you are sure the caller is genuine.
