Malwarebytes has recently seen a lot more cases of scammers targeting Mac computers but Microsoft remains the main method because it is fair bet that many older users will have a computer that runs a Windows operating system.
The software giant is well aware of the tech support scam and since May 2014, has received over 200,000 customer complaints regarding them. This year alone, an estimated 3.3 million people in the United States will pay more than $1.5bn to scammers, according to its figures.
David was starting to believe that the call he had received was genuine but when the “technician” asked him to log into his banking site, he felt something was wrong and hung up.
He is angry that he fell for the scam and even more angry with BT.
“When I needed to get through to them, I couldn’t,” he said.
In a statement BT told the BBC: “BT takes the security of our customers’ accounts very seriously. We have recently been proactively warning our customers to be on their guard against scams. Fraudsters use various methods to ‘glean’ your personal or financial details with the ultimate aim of stealing from you.
“Our advice is that customers should never share their BT account number with anyone and should always shred bills. Be wary of calls or emails you’re not expecting. Even if someone quotes your BT account number, you shouldn’t trust them with your personal information.”
Older, less tech-savvy individuals like David tend to be the main targets of such scammers and, once they fall for it, are called again and again by fraudsters, Courtney Gregoire, a senior lawyer at Microsoft, told the BBC.
“Some lose hundreds of thousands of dollars,” she said.
“80% of what we see are cold callers but we are now seeing traffic for the new type of pop-up fraudsters,” she added.
As well as seeing examples of fraudsters using bogus ISP pop-ups, the cybercrime unit at Microsoft has also seen pop-ups which lock a computer and demand a fee.
The firm has begun talks with ISPs, including US-based ComCast and the UK’s BT on the issue.
In December 2014, in its first big strike against technical support scamming companies, Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit filed a civil lawsuit in a federal court in the Central District of California against Omnitech Support for unfair and deceptive business practices and trademark infringement.
The case was settled out of court under a confidential agreement.
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