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so picture this it's a lazy friday night at home because for the 24th week in a
row you don't have a date and you're enjoying another fine episode of
techwiki while idly browsing the web in a separate window and then suddenly
you get an alarming looking set of error messages and pop-ups telling you that
your pc which you thought was cleaner than a singapore sidewalk is hopelessly
infected with dozens of viruses and you need to call microsoft at this
convenient number right now to fix it and whoa whoa whoa stop right there
there's nothing wrong with your computer it's a tech support scam
and not the one where you pay a hundred bucks for someone to come over to plug
in the SSD you bought from amazon that may be overpriced but at least it's
legitimate tech support scams usually
start from inside a browser window or they can come in the form of a phone
call now over the phone basically someone cold calls you saying that
they're with a major corporation like microsoft in the Windows support
department or something to that effect and that they have somehow detected
serious issues with your pc maybe through a non-existent isp report then
there's browser-based scams these have been rapidly increasing in popularity
especially on unlicensed streaming sites for movies and sporting events the way
these ones work is that many of them try to visually emulate real error messages
like the Windows blue screen of death and they will often throw in a bunch of
logos from companies like google and apple to make them look more legit but
while either of these forms of attack can be disposed of simply by
hanging up the phone or closing your browser they may try to convince you
that doing this you know waiting until the morning to get a second opinion from
geek squad or powering off your system could result in irreparable damage and
that you have to instead allow one of their technicians
to fix the issue for you in either case
once one of these shady characters feels like they've got your attention they'll
usually have you bring up Windows features that a novice computer user
might be unfamiliar with for example having them type something simple into
command prompt and then using whatever comes up as evidence of a
malware infection or telling them to open event viewer which keeps a log of
every system message that pops up now the thing is that even a pc that's
functioning normally will often have a good number of errors in the event
viewer things as small as a game crash or a slight issue with your network
connection but the scammer will tell the victim that these error records are
super dangerous and they will totally wreck their data
then they'll present their solution downloading remote access software so
that they can take control of your system to fix
the problem at some point during this process the scammer will also demand
payment often by credit card either to renew a software license or fix these
fake problems the ones who are mostly just interested in stealing your credit
card details might just kind of puts around for a minute or two and
clear the event viewer log to make it appear that they did something but the
more nefarious ones can also use their remote access to install actual malware
or steal your personal files there have even been cases of scammers deleting the
data and system files if the victim refuses to pay and even though a common
stereotype is that it's older folks that fall for these scams more frequently the
truth is that younger people in their 20s and 30s have also been hit hard by
this sort of cyber crime due to spending more time online so to avoid becoming a
victim keep this in mind companies like
microsoft apple and google will never
cold call you or email you out of the blue to tell you that there's a problem
with your pc or your iphone or whatever and if you get a scam error message
while you're using a browser remember that real errors will almost never
contain any useful information and they will certainly never prompt you
to call a specific number and while we're at it real blue screens of death
take up the entire screen not just your browser window another way
to tell if you're being scammed is to go back in time to third grade and pay
close attention to spelling class many of these fake warnings are littered with
spelling and grammatical errors as well as
super bombastic use of all caps and many
exclamation points not exactly the type of thing you'd
expect to see from a serious multi-billion dollar software company if
you want to see some real-world examples of what to watch out for we've actually
linked a page from microsoft down in the video description which has lots of
useful hints and even screenshots of these sorts of scam pages so if you see
one the best thing to do is just close your browser unless you want to be like
Linus media group alumnus nick van burkle and you enjoy spending your spare
time trolling these people for a bit of
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