Do we have a problem with Tech Aviators?

Norman-B

My daughter moved into her new home several months ago and has been getting mail and 'phone calls for the previous owner since she moved in. She forwards on the mail and asks 'phone callers to write and she will forward the mail on. She will not pass on 'phone number.
Tonight she received a call and it went like this,
"Hello, can I speak with Mr x?"
"Sorry, he no longer lives here"
"Ah, in that case you are the person I must speak with!. I'm calling on behalf of Lloyds TSB and we are experiencing problems with our servers and the problem is caused by the PC in your home. I need you to start up your PC or laptop for me"
"Is your laptop now open? If so please go to Start, now right click Computer"

Now before you all start writing, "She should know better!!" etc etc, she is 7 months pregnant and in her own words, has a baby brain at the moment!
She is unsure what happened after the above but he was asking her questions for several minutes before her husband came in from work. He then took over and the caller became abusive and then hung up.
My son in law now wants to wipe the hard drive clean and reinstall windows. I have the recovery disc for the laptop (it was mine) and I backed up all the info on there two weeks ago. If we do that, she will loose all the progs on there but is reinstalling windows the best thing to do or scan for viruses?
Sorry for the long post but need advice before morning if possible.
Thanks for reading.

MoneySavingUser

Yes the programs will need to be re-installed and the files you backed up copied back over.

Did he manage to get her to install any programs? if not then you are likely fine

Norman-B

Thanks for reply.
She tells me that he told her he needed to gain access to her PC by remote control but she is now unsure if he got that far.

r3tude

I had this the other not long ago they still call me they seem to call for a "Mr Horn"

they asked some probing questions and then said to me they were from Microsoft Support and I needed to fix and error on my laptop however when prompted for information that I had not given them or confirmed they got quite aggressive.

I am a Systems Administrator I got caught out because my Laptop was a part of a company purchase scheme and therefore management and warranty calls go through a different name. when they mentioned a reoccurring error and a HP laptop, which I did have and relating to warranty call my brain connected a Mr Horn with this purchase scheme so started to follow through with this call.

As soon as he mentioned that Microsoft requires me to download "Windows Security" and not to worry because its a part of Windows, I confronted him. I asked him what other information is there on the error report he supposedly received and why if Windows Security is a part of Windows do I have to download it. I then asked him regarding why Windows Defender is known malware and a fake Anti-Virus program. He kept repeating information he got correct then and getting increasingly agitated, repeated attempts to terminate the call politely failed and when I hung up he had the nerve to immediately call back 3 times.

These people are very good and gaining information through social engineering I am a Systems Administrator working with complex I.T systems everyday and almost got snared if it wasn't for my knowledge of malware I would be very embarrassed indeed.

Baby brain or not anyone can get snared, however my advice would be to get a good quality Antivirus and malware program, I advise Kaspersky and perform a full scan, these programs usually flag remote control software like logmein or vnc as suspicious even if they are using those legitimate remote control packages.

scheming_gypsy

MoneySavingUser wrote: »

Yes the programs will need to be re-installed and the files you backed up copied back over.

Did he manage to get her to install any programs? if not then you are likely fine

To be honest i don't even think the scam is that sophisticated that they install any viruses or keyloggers etc. It's just preying on the vulnerable.

• they phone you up and tell you that your machine has flagged a virus,
• they determine the fix fee going off the responses from the person they called. If they're believing it then they can go for a higher fix price
• then they get you to install the remote control software
• Then they remote on
• once they're on they go to Event Viewer and show all the errors and warnings, telling you that they're viruses / problems that raised the alert with them.
• After that they just clear up event viewer and doing whatever else to make it look exciting and technical. You're then left with a nice clean Event Viewer and a dent in your bank account.

If they were going to install keyloggers or trojans, they'd offer the initial service as free so more people would let them remote on.

Norman-B

Thank you both for the replies! I did a full scan (McAfee) this morning and no viruses were present. I was going to download Spybot but I noticed that it had anti virus as well and did not want to have a conflict with McAfee.

My daughter tells me that the caller (David, with the Indian accent) got very aggitated and told her that she had a very serious problem. If the problem was not sorted there and then that an engineer would call to her house and charge £120 call out fee!! She got very concerned and luckly her husband took the 'phone from her and realised what was going on. After he challenged the caller to identify himself, the caller then used offensive language and started shouting. Phone replaced onto receiver but they called back 4 times and threatened my son in law. He (my s in l) called BT and arranged to have a new phone number from this evening.
These scumbags prey on people.
I'm posting this as a warning to others. If someone like r3tude can nearly get hooked, it is a worry.

Spank

Spybot will not conflict with you AV. You should also d/l malwarebytes.