Phone scam warning

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Received a phone call from someone today saying they were with a company linked to Microsoft and that they had received many error reports from our computer over the last few weeks that indicated we had major trojan infections and our firewall was not working. He was quite insistent that I get on the computer and he would help me fix it. I was suspicious and refused to co-operate. I checked with our ISP who said they had not recorded any problems with our computer. I suspect this is a new sneaky scam and it would be very easy for someone to get caught out. If one of my kids had answered the phone they may well have done as he asked. I am in Australia, so not sure if this is just local or international. Just thought it best to warn as many people as possible.

Melanie

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Sounds like a social engineering scam to me. Thanks for posting

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This seems just one of many phishing attacks. Yes you are right, there are MANY people that would fall for this. Thanks for spreading the word on yet another method these folks are using to try to gain from other people’s work. These are just the people we have to be vigilant about keeping away from our PCs.

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Received a phone call from someone today saying they were with a company linked to Microsoft and that they had received many error reports from our computer over the last few weeks that indicated we had major trojan infections and our firewall was not working. He was quite insistent that I get on the computer and he would help me fix it. I was suspicious and refused to co-operate. I checked with our ISP who said they had not recorded any problems with our computer. I suspect this is a new sneaky scam and it would be very easy for someone to get caught out. If one of my kids had answered the phone they may well have done as he asked. I am in Australia, so not sure if this is just local or international. Just thought it best to warn as many people as possible.

Melanie

This sounds like the text in “spam” emails that I get almost every day. Attached to the email is a ZIP or TXT file, which usually contains a virus or malware. I no longer even look at the attachments

“Dear user @my_domain.com,

Your email account was used to send a large amount of spam during the last week.
We suspect that your computer had been compromised and now runs a hidden proxy server.

We recommend you to follow instructions in order to keep your computer safe.

Virtually yours,
my_domain.com technical support team.”

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