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New Dell Tech Support Scams Have Customers Worried Company Was Hacked (onthewire.io)

Posted by Soulskill on from the wouldn't-be-the-first,-won't-be-the-last dept.

Trailrunner7 writes: A new twist on the fake tech support scam has arisen that has victims wondering whether Dell has been hacked.There has been a recent rash of calls to Dell customers in which the caller says he is from Dell itself and is able to identify the victim's PC by model number and provide details of previous warranty and support interactions with the company.

These are details that, it would seem, only Dell or perhaps its contractors would know. One person who was contacted by the scammers wrote a detailed description of the call, and said the caller had personal details that could not have been found online. Dell officials say they're looking into it.

6 of 76 comments (clear)

  1. Dell "privacy" policy is bullshit, IMO by argStyopa · · Score: 4, Interesting

    More than a decade ago, I'd ordered my small business's desktops from Dell. Might have been a couple of times, actually.

    A few years later, I was looking up drivers or somesuch, and noticed that oddly, the login screen for my Dell account had me misidentified as "Ben".

    (My name is nothing like Ben.)

    Then I saw a WAVE of spam, as well as dead-tree mail spam, all addressed to "dear Ben".
    Dell INSISTS that they didn't sell my name to spammers.
    Despite complaining to Dell, last time I checked it still calls me Ben, and I continue to get spam occasionally addressed to Ben.

    Seems pretty clear to me.

    --
    -Styopa
    1. Re:Dell "privacy" policy is bullshit, IMO by Sir_Eptishous · · Score: 4, Funny

      last time I checked it still calls me Ben, and I continue to get spam occasionally addressed to Ben.

      Seems pretty clear to me.

      You're our only hope

      --
      We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
    2. Re:Dell "privacy" policy is bullshit, IMO by phishybongwaters · · Score: 5, Informative

      The likely didn't sell the info. It's more likely that at least 1 of their outsourced call centers (guess which country) *shared* this information with other parties. You'd be surprised, or maybe not, to know this is actually a business model many agencies use. Get the contract to be tech support, get access to customer records, lose contract and walk away with the account database, then start cold calling. In fact, there's a documentary out there somewhere showing this in action.

  2. Dell's been "looking into it" for months by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Anyone notice that that the link is to a forum post from SIX MONTHS ago? And here's a post in Dell's forum about the problem in 2014 -- so, *18* months ago.

    http://en.community.dell.com/s...

    Is Dell unable to address this problem -- so they're just hoping it goes away?

  3. Re:Maybe that Dell kid is desperate for money by Sir_Eptishous · · Score: 4, Funny

    Dude, I'm homeless now!

    "Dude, you're getting a Dell box!"

    --
    We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
  4. Re:Service Tags don't require log-in to check by vux984 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Service Tags are rather short, if you brute force guessed existing service tags would it give enough personal info (first/last name) to then do a phone directory look-up to get enough info to know your number, name, service tag, etc...?

    Brute force guessing valid tags is trivial: Here's one i made up by changing some digits around from one I had: FCKBRK1

    Other than the country in which it was, and when it was shipped, and when the warranty ended, I'm not seeing anything useful for identifying who owns it.

    I'm expecting dell itself was breached, or one of its support contractors.