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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."
It follows that more savvy and knowledgable users are less likely to fall for social engineering attempts. Ignorance is the social engineers' very best friend.
So then where was that savvy and knowledge when people were installing malware ridden screensavers on their Ubuntu boxes? Or where were all those eyes on the source when UnrealIRCD had a trojan put into the Linux version without anyone knowing for a year? You can crow all you want about only Windows users falling for this and all about how open source leads to this not happening but there are counterexamples to show this just isn't true.