October 20,2017
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, This “Scam Of The Week” is a variant on the Microsoft tech support scam where they call PC users and claim they have detected a problem with the person’s computer and need to fix it. End-users gullible enough to give access to their workstations (usually via remote software), are billed hundreds of dollars on their credit card but the scammers of course don’t fix anything — and in some cases their PCs are infected with ransomware until they pay up.
Recently Dell Computers have been singled out.
Several residents in the Village and other local towns have reported this scam .
In October the Dell posted a warning about this type telephone scam on its website.
In the mean time we suggest you send this to your employees, friends and family:
“There is a new tech support scam doing the rounds. This time it is cyber criminals with foreign accents calling you, claiming they are from Dell and they even have the correct service tag of your Dell PC. They will try to manipulate you into giving them access to your computer so that they can “fix the problem” and charge your credit card or worse, infect your computer with ransomware.
If you get called by unknown people claiming to be tech support (any company) and need to get access to your computer, hang up the phone immediately and delete any email they might send you with similar claims.
ONLY give out personal information if you have initiated the call and properly looked up the main company number yourself on the company’s main website you want to reach. Do not rely on a popup, advertisement, or general web search on another website or forum unless you can verify it is a valid source and verify it is a valid phone number for that company.”
Ridgewood Resident and IT professional Greg May says ,”These scams have been going on for years. I get called every other month. As one who works in IT security (White Hat Hacker), the best thing for folks to do is hang up. Microsoft, Dell, HP, Apple or any other tech firm will not call you to tell you they are picking up errors on your system. Please spead the word as these folks are scum that target folks who don’t know much about IT.”