He asked me to go to my Windows PC and requested that I perform some mundane tasks, like opening the web browser, and hitting a couple of websites-all the while telling me what I should expect to see on-screen. When I answered the phone, a heavily accented fellow explained that he was with Microsoft and that my ISP has contacted them because a Windows machine using my broadband connection was infected with a virus. Just in case you find yourself the target of one of these phone scams, or you want to inform your not-so-tech-savvy acquaintances about the possibility, I figured it would be beneficial to let you all know how the call went down. But I’m also experienced enough to know when a so-called technician doesn’t know his gigabits from gigabytes, and it wouldn’t have taken long to figure out the caller was full of it anyway. The odds of Microsoft ever calling an end-user out of the blue are about as likely as Bill Gates giving away millions of dollars on Facebook because you shared a photo, so that’s the first clue. Of course, I knew right out of the gate that the call was a sham. Well, I just got off the phone with a couple of these scammers. More nefarious scammers will then go the extra mile and install spyware on your machine to snag your passwords and other personal information, which could then be used to access your bank accounts or even steal your identity. Over the course of the conversation, he’ll ask to remote into your PC, and ultimately tell you that the level of support required to fix it requires payment and that you’ll have to provide a credit card number. If you haven’t heard similar stories, they usually go something like this: a person calls and says that he is a tech with Microsoft that’s contacting you because your Windows-based computer is infected with a virus and he wants to help fix it.
Unfortunately, the calls are all scams that can have dire consequences. For the last few months, I’ve heard numerous stories from friends, family, and clients about calls they’ve supposedly received from Microsoft.
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