Warning: Indian virus scam

squarefrog

I don't know if this is the right place to post this, but I need to get this message across to people.

I work as an IT Technician at a northern art & design college, and over the past few weeks I've had an alarming amount of people coming and telling me they've had a recent phone call stating their computer had a virus. The calls seem to come from an Indian call center, and are usually, but not exclusively, cold calls. The caller states your computer has been infected, and they request permission to use your computer remotely to "remove the virus".

If you get one of these calls, immediately hang up. If you are unfortunate to let them in, this is what happens:

They install malicious software (spyware to be exact) on your PC, and then demand around £130 for "fixing" your computer. This spyware they install, will pop up asking for money, and could stop your broad band from working.

I'm waiting for someone to bring their PC in for me to have a look at how to remove this software, but in the mean time, make sure you have anti-virus and spyware software installed. Some good free ones are: AVG Anti-Virus, Avast Anti-Virus, Ad-Aware, Spybot Search & Destroy. I cannot provide links yet as I've just joined.

With good software installed, it is much less likely that your computer could become infected with a virus, which should make these phone calls more obviously fake.

If you are at all worried about this type of thing, come and post at the techie forum. We'll be able to help you. Don't pay money for this sort of thing!

kwikbreaks

This topic gets brought up at least once a week.

squarefrog

OK well no worries. I couldn't find anything by searching.

bcl999

kwikbreaks wrote: »

This topic gets brought up at least once a week.

Well, I've never seen it before so thanks squarefrog

custardy

lets be honest
if someone called you saying your PC had a virus
would you believe them?
i know some would but they are unlikely to be hanging around the tech section of MSE

kwikbreaks

bcl999 wrote: »

Well, I've never seen it before so thanks squarefrog

Here's the one from last week...

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/2598777

bat999

Also a report in the Guardian here:-http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/18/phone-scam-india-call-centres/print

Geoffo_M

kwikbreaks wrote: »

This topic gets brought up at least once a week.

But that's one of the advantages of forums - it spreads the word. Better it's mentioned once a week than never at all

kwikbreaks

Geoffo_M wrote: »

But that's one of the advantages of forums - it spreads the word. Better it's mentioned once a week than never at all

The original poster says he searched and couldn't find a mention and bcl999 has close to 1000 posts yet says he's never seen it mentioned either so on that small sample this forum isn't good at spreading the word. Most regulars will have seen this topic before though but as has been said most would have more technical nous than to get taken in by it.

JasX

Plus I'd seriously worry about any IT technician that thought AVG was a reliable AV these days, certainly wuldn;t catch me poking a USB stick onto anything on his network...

If you are going to get a little concerned about something right now it'd be the .lnk zero day exploit announced last week which MS have yet to issue a patch for and 99.99% of the worlds PCs are defenceless against....

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/advisory/2286198.mspx

epninety

squarefrog wrote: »

The calls seem to come from an Indian call center, and are usually, but not exclusively, cold calls.

So these calls that are NOT cold calls? Do your users ring up and say 'please take over my PC!'?