Are phone calls about computer errors always a scam?

SiroGarmr

archieboy wrote: »

Looking for some advice please for retired couple who are not terribly computer savvy.

Twice in the past couple of weeks I've received a phone call and the callers with American accents have said there is a Windows problem with my computer. I have heard about all the scam phone calls so have just said to them that I do not want to buy anything from them and hung up the phone.

My husband is now wondering if they are genuine as some time last year he had a problem with his computer and called a company (American) who asked permission to take over his computer to fix it. They gave him a price before they started. They did fix the problem. He's wondering now if these calls were maybe the same company and if they could see a problem on our computer - is this possible? Not long after I put down the phone an error message flashed up on my laptop. Didn't see it properly but saw something like 'Chrome had run out of memory'. Is that just a coincidence? Any advice would be appreciated.

Scam

Have someone trustworthy completely scour your pc.

John_Gray

I think you'll find that the American accent (or any other non-British) accent is a giveaway for this sort of spammer.

Come to that, a British accent probably fits the bill, too.

Hoseman

I had a similar call a few weeks ago but this one was from India. These scammers just try their luck to see who bites.

macman

kwikbreaks wrote: »

There is a world of difference between you calling a support company and getting an unsolicited phone call.

By all means run malwarebytes as suggested but as the fix was apparently some time ago I doubt there will be anything found - if they had found any financial details you'd have been cleaned out long ago.

That would of course depend how you got their contact details. Why would anyone in the UK seek computer support from a US company-unless it came up on a random Google search? I might allow someone based nearby who's credibility I could verify to have remote access to a PC, but not someone based on the other side of the world whose ID cannot be checked.