Microsoft Telephone Scam

URGENT!!  WARNING OF “MICROSOFT“ COMPUTER SCAM BY TELEPHONE

If you receive a telephone call purporting to be from “Microsoft” and someone says that you have viruses on your computer and they can help clean your system, just abuse them and hang up!
This is a total scam – Microsoft will never call you, unless they are responding to a previous sales or technical enquiry that you have made.

We have previously issued warning on this scam in the last 12 months, and again they seem to be back, we have had hundreds of clients who have been contacted or caught by this rip-off for at least $120 and in some cases more.

Typically these criminals will ask you to download some software from the internet that gives them access to your PC. They will then steal copies of your address book / email contacts and your documents. They will also ask you for approximately $120 on your credit card to “clean” your PC.
So they will then have your credit card details.
 

The really major issue is that they also install a hidden program on your PC that will secretly email them details of your logins to any financial institutions, eBay, ComSec, PayPal etc in the future.

** This gives them access to your personal logins /passwords and enables them to withdraw large sums from your accounts **

Often the caller will have a ‘foreign’ accent but we have also had people with Australian accents make such calls.  They also are using local australian based phone numbers. As mentioned above, the safest approach is to just hang up.

If you have been scammed we recommend you contact you IT consultant or you nearest Computer Troubleshooters to enable your systems to be scanned to prevent information collection.