Cold calling Online PC Care scammers

So the phone rings, I pick it up and an “Indian” sounding voice tells me that my PC may be being compromised by malware, or performing poorly due to junk files. Then I get offered the chance to have my PC scanned to detect any problems, for free! Wow, that sounds great, only it’s not so wonderful because it’s a scam designed to relieve you of your hard earned cash.

Calls typical come from an official sounding name such as “Online PC Doctors” or “Online PC Care”, and the caller may sound as if they are calling from a call centre. Typically they will want you to download some software, or login to a remote access service, so they can access your computer. Once allowed access they’ll probably tell you about some supposed “serious issues” on your computer and be offered some sort of service or software to clean it up - at a price - this could be anything from £30 upwards.

If you get caught out you’ll probably find some useless software installed on your system, your bank balance a bit lighter, and absolutely no difference in your computers performance. In a worst case you may even find that your computer has been compromised with malware, spyware, and maybe even keyloggers designed to steal your password and even your bank details.

You don’t need these sorts of services

There are numerous tools already available for cleaning up malware and junk files. At the very least you should be running anti-virus software to catch nasties before they infect your system, or even better a full security suite such as http://www.eset.co.uk/ that includes anti-virus, anti-malware and other protection tools.

If you need more tools here are some proven, reliable and free ones:

http://www.malwarebytes.org/ - removes malicious software (Windows)
http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner - cleans out junks files (Windows)
http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html - removes spyware/malware (Windows)

5th Jul 2010 by Rob Allen | Filed in The Internet