A Story On ONLINE PC TROUBLE SHOOTING SCAM

A Langley woman recently tangled with a bogus pc tech assistance scam that has circled the globe.

First, a contact declaring to be operating for Microsoft convinced her to allow distant entry to her pc so he could fix some issues on her device.

Then she had a change of heart and turned off.

She even had her disk drive reformatted as a precaution.

Three months later, another contact created the same claim and sought the same accessibility.

This time, she known as the police.

The Langley RCMP have now issued a public warning about such calls, describing them as "completely fraudulent."

Usually, the goal is to scare a pc owner by declaring their device is contaminated with so-called "malware" and could crash if they don't provide contact handheld distant control of the pc to fix the issues.

In fact, the pc may indeed be contaminated, by the person apparently wanting to fix it.

An unscrupulous technician can use distant entry to install whatever they want on a pc, usually application that triggers ominous-looking warnings about potentially hazardous infections.

The bogus anti-virus application is commonly known as criminal protection application or rogueware.

It can be used to harvest details from a pc, including internet banking consideration details and credit score card consideration numbers.

A lot of the suspicious activity has been linked to aggressive telephone solicitors declaring to work for "Support On Click" a company based in India that appears to be marketing "PC Security Shield," a known criminal program.

Investigators overseas report the fraudsters have targeted residents of Canada, the U.S., UK and Australia.

People who make the mistake of allowing distant accessibility by out-of-the-blue callers usually end up having to alter their banking institutions and changing all their consideration details and other sensitive details.

Online protection experts advise hanging up if you get an unexpected contact from someone about your pc body's protection status.

And never provide a stranger distant entry to your pc.

Don't offer personal, credit score card or consideration details over the cellphone unless you created the contact to a known number.

Protect your pc with application from a legitimate, known source.