It’s a fact of life that when you manage to change a process to be impervious to scams, criminals will find another way to do it. In the U.S. today, call center-based frauds are skyrocketing, and these various crimes are taking on new dimensions all the time.
Australian telecom giant Telstra (News - Alert) is warning consumers of a new scam bogus tech support phone calls. In the scam, customers are called at home and told they need to pay for technical support to fix a problem that doesn't exist on their computer, according to a recent article by Zoya Sheftalovich on the Australian consumer website Choice. Scammers are specifically targeting Telstra customers and fraudulently presenting themselves of employees of that company.
"The people running the phone scam appear to want our customers' identity and in particular their personal banking details," Telstra has warned customers.
"The criminals operating these scams are trying to sell customers fake software updates, or trick them into disclosing their personal details over the telephone so those details can then be used illegally,” said Peter Jamieson.
The scam isn’t unique to Australia. A similar scam circulated in years past in various countries, perpetrated by individuals who falsely represented themselves as Microsoft (News - Alert) employees. The caller would ask the victim to open the Windows Event Viewer on his or her computer to see if it’s infected. Error messages found there would seem to support their claims of infection, though experts say these errors are common and mostly harmless. The caller would then be referred to someone posing as a technician who could fix the problem for a fee, often by offering to install antivirus software on the machine that could be downloaded by the computer user from elsewhere for free. Scammers have also been known to install malware on victim’s computers so they can continue to cause havoc.
In 2012, cooperative action taken by three international regulators – Australian, Canadian and U.S. – supposedly shut down the global scam. Authorities in the U.S. won court orders to close down and freeze accounts held by the Microsoft imposters.
Authorities warn consumers to be wary of cold calls from individuals purporting to work for a technology company or a telecommunications services provider. Consumers should hang up on any individual calling out of the blue and asking for access to a household computer or personal information, or informing the called party that problems could be fixed for a fee.
Edited by Alisen Downey