Windows Support Scam - I was called by someone who said they were windows support and my computer was sending them warnings and messages!

Anonymous
2012-03-06T00:43:31+00:00

March 5, 2012

Windows Support Scam -

I was called at home by someone who said they were windows support and my computer was sending them warnings and messages!

They asked me to open Eventvwr (Event Viewer) to look at the errors. I was to count the errors and warnings.

Then they wanted me to go to www.support.me (don't go there BTW) and a microsoft certified technician would log into my computer and help me fix the problems.

Obviously a scam

I persisted on asking what company they were:

First they said "Windows Operating System"

Then "Customer Care"

And finally

"Softnet Communications for Windows"

They said the phone number was 209-813-0133 (don't call this BTW) and they were in the United States of California

They never could explain what the warnings and messages were.

Someone needs to stop these guys

--- Update ---

August 8 2015

They called again and gave me the same basic pitch.  This time a person with an Indian accent who called him self Kevin said that my computer was calling them because of a massive problem (infection by malware).  His company was Technical Support for Windows users and that the R&D group at Microsoft had a program that notified him of the problem.   After 5 min he wanted me to go to a web site (please do Not go here and click anything) www.121usahelp.com - which if you look at the web page source code will load TeamViewerQS.exe for windows or TeamViewerQS.bmg for Mac.  Do Not Fall for this scam they want you to pay them money and they load software on your computer that is Bad.  

Microsoft Please stop these types of scams - they are hurting less skilled users and older people with computers who don't know better.

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Security and privacy

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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Anonymous
2012-03-06T13:28:12+00:00

Hi,

Microsoft will not make unsolicited phone calls to help you with your computer. If you receive a phone call like this, hang up.

If you think you might be a victim of fraud, you can report it. For more information, see What to do if you've responded to a phishing scam.

**For your reference:**Don’t fall for phony phone tech support. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/securitytipstalk/archive/2010/03/09/don-t-fall-for-phony-phone-tech-support.aspx

Hope this information is helpful.

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Anonymous
2015-06-17T14:10:03+00:00

I had a call at 10:00 p.m. last night that my computer was "sending out error messages."  The woman had a very foreign accent and told  me she was from Windows Support.  I immediately went ballistic as I was in bed and told her it was 10:00 P.M.!  She said she knew it was late, but this was very, very important.  I then told her to take my number out of their system and to not call again and she said quite forcefully that they would continue to call me about the "problem."  I told her I was probably 10 times more intelligent than she was, I was very computer literate, there was nothing wrong with my computer, etc., etc., etc.  When I asked her where she was at, she replied "Windows Support," but when I told her I wanted to know what country she was calling from, she hung up!  I knew it was an obvious scam and called her quite a few choice names during the brief conversation.  Probably should have put her on "terminal hold" for the rest of the night!

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Anonymous
2015-02-14T22:31:45+00:00

@ climatechangeisreal

I have no idea why that link suddenly doesn't work anymore...

I've asked here: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/feedback/forum/fdbk_commsite-feedback_other/why-is-official-msft-link-report-a-scam-broken/7c98c1f7-c788-4f53-8247-0d4b5e6815fb?tm=1423952532535 if somebody knows if it's a temporary glitch or something else...

Thanks for pointing it out :)

J

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  1. Anonymous
    2015-12-04T22:17:06+00:00

    Today I received a call on my cell phone. Caller ID just said 633 or something like that, normally I wouldn't even answer an unknown call but right now I am on short notice calls for hot jobs and I thought it could be work related so I answered.

    A guy in a thick Indian accent [which is about what we expect for computer support these days] Says hello, my name is Kevin and I am from Microsoft. We have detected that a person in New York has hacked into your computer and is in the process of doing illegal activities on your account. I am here to guide you through what we need to do to stop this and trace this person so they can be arrested.

    Was thinking woe, that sounds serious. The fact that they even had my phone number in the 1st place gave him a bit of credibility, but I was still on my guard.

    I said Ok, what do we need to do. So he says are you at your computer, by chance it was on. He told me to hold down the windows key and R at the same time, I did that and he asks, so what do you see ? I said I see a run box. He says perfect, now type eventvwr in it, I did and he asks so what do you see ? I said well, I see the event viewer. Perfect ! He says now hit custom views then administrative events, now what do you see ? I said I see a bunch of read flags with errors and warnings.

    He said ah yes, these are the intrusion attempts, you see ! [I'm guessing that anyone can do this at any time and see a bunch of these red flags from various events, and these scammers lead people through this step to convince them that they are in trouble and need help bad].

    So he says Ok now close that down and has me open up the run box again.

    He says now type S as in Steve, U as in uniform ect, so I followed along it was something like support.me.

    Once I got to the dot after me red flags started waving for some reason, just didn't sound very Microsoft. I say hey, you say you are from Microsoft, got any proof who you are ? He starts blathering on trying desperately to convince me that he is legit and I am in bad need of his services. While he was blathering I googled up "support.me" and the first results were about windows support scams like this site.

    So needless to say I told him to get %$##%$# and not call back and hung up.

    How they got my number I don't know, could be from many sources these days ,,, But the guy never did address me by name.

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