"Microsoft" phone scam - BEWARE
 

my dad just rang me, saying earlier in the day when my mum (who is recovering from breast cancer) has a phone call from "microsoft" saying "turn your pc on you have a virus, we will clear it for you".

My mum being my mum, not technical at all goes and does what they've asked.

Now i work and use computers and have done for the last 26 years, if she had rung me i would have told her to put the phone down on them. I know its a scam, but the problem is, im 150 miles away from their house so i cant go checking it for spyware (i bet the bathplugs have installed a keylogger). I dont want to connect remotely as i dont know what these gits have put on the computer.

ive told my dad not to use paypal or his credit card. hopefully he'll listen. He's running spybot so ive given him instructions on how to update it and run scans and immunize and fix, hopefully that'll clear what crap they would have transferred onto it.

Has anyone else experienced this and if so, do you know what ****e they put on your PC so i can advise me pops if his computer is going to be ok after spybot has done its thing (he's got avg free too)

If you've never heard about this before, please beware as there are people ringing up pretending to be microsoft and offering to clean your computer (for money of course) but what they do is access your pc first after giving you instructions on how to remote assist. Please just put the phone down if you get that type of call.

Carl

Thanks for the heads up carl

have you had any luck scanning it etc - give me a call tomo...

A normal scan is unlikely to uncover anything if its unknown to the antivirus etc..... I personally would not feel safe until it was wiped and re installed.

I've had this call twice from Microsoft now :-(

im too far away to access it and dont want to do it remotely. I'll bitdefend it when i visit next month and check the registry and any unusual filenames.

Remote desktop access is the first thing they normally get the unsuspecting victim to do.
Last one I saw like this had the admin account activated(vista) and a rather nice desktop banner that locked the user out of the system after they refused to pay, very similar to the fakealert spyware thats doing the rounds at the mo.

Reinstalling the sys would be the best/safest way forward.

Have sanitised of private/ medical info and posted on face book. Anyone doing this needs connecting to the mains.