Computer Scam Calls

What to do with the computer scam phone callers - nothing!

Nuisance Callers

These have been coming through a lot recently, people calling pretending to be from one of the big broadband providers.

First off, you haven't been infected with anything, Microsoft or any of the other big tech companies are not going to phone you up and tell you about an infection, because they can't tell, and certainly the people who provide your router can not either.

I spent half an hour with one caller the other day who took me through all of my system logs, they were for the general errors that happen on any system periodically, before trying to get me to install a Remote Desktop viewer, so that they could log onto to my computer and steal all of my information.

So what to do if you get called by these people?

Put the phone down, unless you work in tech, in which case have a little fun locally to waste their time if you have some yourself.
Don't provide any personal information, certainly don't pay anything.
If you can get the telephone number or any details then report it to http://www.actionfraud.police.uk/
If you think you may have given away information, please change as many passwords as you had straight away, if you think your banking details are compromised tell your bank straight away, they will be able to look for any fraudulent transactions. Make sure your anti-virus is up to date and run a full scan, we have installed the free Windows Defender or Microsoft Security Essentials (Windows 7) on family members PC's who didn't have any before, completely free, and not had any problems since.
Don't be afraid to talk about it either, only by sharing this information will we stop these calls.