Peter Clarke

PC PAL Andover and Winchester

Peter Clarke is based in Andover and looks after both residential & business customer in Andover, Salisbury, Winchester & surrounding areas. Tel: 01264 931000 or 01962 921000 Email: [email protected]
Tips & How-to's 1st December 2011 1597

Beware of ‘Computer Support’ cold calls warns Peter Clarke of PC PAL

I have made visits to several customers lately who tell similar stories.  They have received telephone calls out of the blue from ‘engineers’ purporting to be from Microsoft or their ISP (Internet Service Provider) e.g. BT or TalkTalk.  They were told that the ‘engineers’ have detected that their computer was running slowly and has several errors which they could help remove.

To illustrate the problems, the users were directed to look at the Event Viewer where hundreds of ‘error’ messages were displayed.

The ‘engineer’ explained that for a one-off fee the user could take out a service contract whereby the ‘engineer’ would clean up the computer.

Credit card details were then given to the ‘engineer’, who took control of the user’s computer, installed various programs and ran an antivirus scan.

This all sounds very innocent but for the following:

  • Microsoft & ISPs never make cold calls about technical problems with your computer unless you’ve already logged a fault call with them.
  • Problems with your computer cannot be detected by anyone remotely unless you explicitly give them access to it.
  • The Windows System Log always contains many messages – this is quite normal and not proof that you have computer problems.

These calls were undoubtedly a scam to get the user to give over their credit card details and to enable the scammers to install software that could potentially steal sensitive data such as bank details and passwords from the user’s computer.

So what can we learn from this?

Anyone calling up out of the blue and asking to connect to your PC should be refused. Never give up sensitive personal information to someone over the telephone (or Internet) unless you are certain that they are genuine; and never give it to someone who has cold called you.

If this has happened to you and you are concerned about the state of your computer then you can call PC PAL on 01264 931 000 or talk to your usual trusted Computer Support professional.

Peter Clarke

Peter Clarke is based in Andover and looks after both residential & business customer in Andover, Salisbury, Winchester & surrounding areas.

Tel: 01264 931000 or 01962 921000
Email: [email protected]

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