Tech support scams

A technical support scam refers to a class of telephone fraud activities, in which a scammer claims to offer a legitimate technical support service, often via cold calls to unsuspecting users. Such cold calls are mostly targeted at Microsoft Windows users, with the caller often claiming to represent a Microsoft technical support department.

In English-speaking countries such as the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia, such cold call scams have occurred as early as 2008 and primarily originate from call centers in India.

The scammer will typically attempt to get the victim to allow remote access to their computer. After remote access is gained, the scammer relies on confidence tricks typically involving utilities built into Windows and other software in order to gain the victim's trust to pay for the supposed "support" services, when the scammer actually steals the victim's credit card account information.

Technical support scams typically rely on social engineering. Scammers use a variety of confidence tricks to get the victim to install remote desktop software, with which they take control of the victim's computer, and then use various Windows components and utilities (such as the Event Viewer), third-party utilities (such as rogue security software), and other tasks to make the victim believe that the computer has issues that need to be fixed, before proceeding for the victim to pay for "support".

Technical support scams can begin in a variety of different ways. It most commonly begins with a cold call, usually claiming to be associated with a legitimate-sounding third-party, with a name like "Microsoft" or "Windows Technical Support", or via advertising on popular search engines such as Bing or Google, cybersquatting keywords related to commercial products and services that an unsuspecting user may search for (such as "Microsoft live chat", "Facebook support", or "Outlook login help"), and leading to web pages containing a number to be called. Some scams have been initiated via pop-up ads on infected websites instructing the potential victim to call a number. These pop-ups often resemble error messages such as the Blue Screen of Death.

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Wikipedia