Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Phone calls from a secret and mysterious IT companies offering installation anti-virus and anti-spyware software
Dear All
Over the last two weeks we have been running a quite interesting discussion about the necessity of buying an extra hard drive to backup your computer data. Today I would like to raise a bit different subject - sudden and unexpected phone calls from companies which offer a service and installation their anti-virus and anti-malware software. Of course they do not do it for FREE.
During my work with home clients around the Haringay from time to time I'm told that there are some companies which are calling individual users, taking remote control of clients' computers without their permission and preparing a little presentation showing how much virus, malware and spyware are living in operating systems. They are very clever and smart guys who know what to show you to destroy your piece of mind and sense of your computer security.
If you are reacting immediately you can provide your credit and debit card details and also pay between £30-£40 for software which in most of the cases is completely useless. Once you've paid them, they do not care any more and you won't be able to find them anywhere. A perfect way of stealing your money.
What to do if you receive this kind of phonecall:
1. Ask them to provide their phone numbers, websites , names and address so it's possible to check if their company exists at all
2. Give yourself some time to think through your decision and never provide your debit or credit card details to pay for "their excellent anti-virus software". At least a day or two so the trial of time would be fullfilled.
3. Whatever you see on the screen during their presentation do not worry and feel scared as every problem with computers can be solved quite easily with extra support of your friend or computer specialist. They try to scare an unexperienced computer users so they will readily pay for security.
Please comment if you've ever come across this problem.
Tags for Forum Posts: scam, telephone scam
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by DrWhams on
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I don't see your point. There is zero correlation between POSIX compatibility and security against vulnerabilities. A fully patched Windows system is as secure as a fully patched Linux/Unix system. It's more difficult to be fully patched on OS X because Apple have a terrible reputation for acknowledging vulnerabilities and patching them. I think it took 49 days before a patch for Flashback was released, for instance.
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Permalink Reply by Joe Bailey on
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Clive, out of interest, why do you refer to wintel system (Windows / Intel architecture) as DOS-Windows?
All current versions of Windows (XP onward in consumer land) are "built on NT technology", and merely have a DOS like command line to revert to, rather than being a GUI which sits on top of a DOS instance.
Anyone running "DOS-Windows" would have an operating system no less than 12 years out of date, and I'm guessing there aren't that many still out there, just a thought but you could save yourself a deal of typing and perhaps improve the accuracy of your terminology by simply referring to "Wintel" or "Windows" operating systems.
I suspect I've opened a can of worms by asking this ;) -
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Permalink Reply by Marek on
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Yes Joe
You have done it. I could already see all our Mac lovers jumping on you
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Permalink Reply by John D on
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Being a paranoid technophobe, I have never once typed my main bank account numbers into my computer. For purchases such as Amazon, eBay etc, I have a separate account at a different bank in which I keep a small balance enough to cover such purchases. Thus, if someone ever manages to hack into my computer any losses should be small.
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Permalink Reply by Clive Carter on
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John you're right to be wary.
A friend was unhappily involved in a work-related dispute. My friend, against my advice, ran a computer running the "Windows" operating system and he noticed some odd behaviour (odd even by Windows standards). He worried he'd been hacked. I mentioned months earlier that "key-logging" software, if secreted into your machine, could render even the strongest, most powerful password quite useless.
He uses Gmail, as I do. I pointed out that with Gmail, you can check the IP addresses of all recent sessions. These should all be the same number (your own), unless you remember checking mail on a different machine at a particular time. Imagine his horror when he realised there was an IP address he couldn't account for. He'd had key-logging software on his machine for a long time, allowing full access to his Windows box by the other person, who had "issues".
It's safest to run a high quality operating system behind a software firewall, behind a hardware firewall, even then, its still possible for the user to get hooked by a phishing expedition.
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