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The Unstoppable 'Tech Support' Scam
Barence writes "A pernicious new type of scam is targeting British computer owners, reports PC Pro. The con is both fiendishly clever and ridiculously simple. The fraudster cold-calls the customer and tells them that Microsoft has detected a virus on their PC, then invites them to download a piece of remote-assistance software. No doubt reassured by the lines of indecipherable code flitting across their screen, the caller assures the customer they can make the virus vanish – but first, of course, they want payment. £185 to be precise. The spoof site behind the scam is approved by McAfee's Site Advisor and bears Microsoft logos, something which both companies have failed to act upon. Meanwhile, an assortment of British regulators have said there is nothing they can do to stop it."
The only thing you need to stop this unstoppable scam is for people to be unwilling to shell out a significant sum of money to some c**t who calls them up out of the blue.
I mean, £185, when you didn't know there was anything wrong with your computer in the first place? You'd need to have more money than brains to shell out for that.
God, there are some real scumbags in the world.
And a lot of fools.
God, there are some real scumbags in the world.
Yes, but they are non-violent and require the cooperation of their "victims". Thus, they are like ticks, leeches, mosquitoes, flies, and worms: they are unpleasant and downright nasty but they serve a purpose. They provide a limiting function. They disincentivize ignorance and stupidity by making it more painful, just like those natural pests disincentivize improper sanitation. By becoming knowledgable and savvy, the "victim" can have total control over whether he/she is successfully targeted.
Really now, all it would take is a small amount of healthy skepticism. Let's assume the scammer is so good that there are no other "tells". A user would only need to say to the scammer "Microsoft found a virus on my PC did they? Let me get back to you" and then call Microsoft. As unpleasant as calling Microsoft would be, it beats giving money to a scammer. It's the same well-known principle used for dealing with suspicious communications from banks. If you don't know if that e-mail is really from your bank because you don't have the technical skill to determine that, then you ignore it and call your bank at their published phone number. Then it doesn't matter if it's the most clever phishing e-mail in the world.
It doesn't exactly require a genius to understand these things. It just requires that one not leap blindly into what they do not understand while expecting a good result. That's general advice for life, not just computing. I personally believe that almost everyone is capable of understanding these simple concepts, they just can't be bothered to think. Perhaps they need a little incentive. Perhaps by providing one the scammers are serving a purpose, even though I fully agree with you that they are scumbags. That's why I'd liken them to a carrion-eater or a parasite.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
A lot of it is psychological; users convince themselves that computers are too complicated for them to understand, so they are.
We had an app at work that ran on a Windows CE-based palmtop that nurses used to record patient notes on their visits and then synced back to a server when they got back to base. The users never had any problems with this at all. Then, when the palmtops were up for replacement, they swapped them out for notebooks running XP with exactly the same app (newer version, same UI) and sync process and suddenly none of the users were able to cope any more.
Despite the fact that the processes were identical, they saw the notebooks as "proper" computers as opposed to the palmtops that were just electronic notepads in their minds and they convinced themselves that as a proper computer it was too complex for them to understand. So much of the trouble with technology is users creating barriers in their own minds and it's largely of "our" own making for trying to convince users throughout the 90s that computers were easy to use and would do everything for them, when we all know that isn't true.
It's the big secret of people who are 'knowledgeable' about computer.
50% of the time when 'help' someone do something, like send email...we don't know anything any more than they do. we're just reading the damn screen and doing what the logical thing would be, and we're not scared of doing the wrong thing. I mean, people ask me to help them send an attachment using a webmail system I'd never seen before:
Why don't you click on the 'Attach file' link there and select the file? Okay, where'd you save the file? Okay, select it, and then type something in the body, and press send. There you go. Yes, that's me, a computer genius, reading the screen like that and having the ability to use common dialog boxes.(1)
And another 25% of the time we're solving problems by applying basic computer knowledge. Like, very basic. Like 'able to learn in 10 hours' basic. Stuff like 'The World Wide Web works by your computer talking to another computer through even more computers.' and 'Video files tend to about 10 times as big as mp3s per minute.' and 'Wireless signals are often encrypted'.
And another 20% of the time it's stuff we've either run into before, and thus know what to do, or we fricking google it. Lacking the basic computer knowledge above just turns that 25% into this also. (I'm often like this on a Mac.)
There is almost no 'skill' involved at all. Half of it is just a willingness to say 'Okay, this looks right, let's try that'.
Only about 5% of the stuff people who are 'knowledgeable' about computers do for others as 'tech support', mainly stuff like buying/building computers, and programming, and other 'creative' stuff where you aren't fixing something that's broken, actually require any skill.
I mean, I have a younger brother who doesn't have any formal computer training outside of high school and an Office class for his associate degree. He's an auto mechanic.
But he grew up with a nerd and a half-nerd, so he knows how to operate his computer, and any questions from him are things like 'Should I go with AGP or should I pay more for PCI-E?' and 'This game is giving some sort of Direct X error on startup, and all I can find are suggestions to reinstall it and Direct X...which I've done. Ideas?'. This is because he learned 'the secret' to solve computer problems: Do the obvious thing, and if you don't know what that is, google what's wrong. And backup your computer so if it blows up, you can just reinstall.
1) Yes, yes, we've all fallen prey to the stupid inability to see things right in front of us, and someone else points it out instantly, but I'm not talking about that here.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?