Telephone Scams

Telephone Scam

We have been receiving reports from clients over the last couple of weeks that a telephone scam is targeting the Great Dunmow area again.  What happens is you receive a telephone call from someone claiming to be from Microsoft and informing you that they have information which indicates problems and security issues with your PC.  The caller then requests your permission and assistance to remotely connect to your PC offering to fix the problems for you.

This is a scam!

Firstly Microsoft do not offer this kind of service to any of it’s customers be they individual home users or multi-national companies.  They do not monitor the performance of individual computers aside from the error reporting system that is built into Windows and occasionally asks you to make a report.  The information contained in this report, should you choose to submit it, does not include any information that could personally identify you or your computer and does not include any contact details. The group that are calling you are doing so solely to gain access to your computer so that they can introduce malware which they will then charge you to remove.

Because of the amount of unwanted malware that is already introduced to computers by way of Spam, Trojans and other nefarious methods these telephone calls often coincide with warning messages or slow performance problems and this lends credence to the claims that the caller is making.  To further validate their claims of legitimacy callers have also offered to inform clients of the Security Identification Number of their computer,  computers have no such unique identification.  Some manufacturers will add a Service Tag or other Serial Number but that if for the use of a particular manufacturer only and is in no way guaranteed to be globally unique across all computers from all manufacturers.

The best course of action is to inform the caller that you are already aware of the problem and that you have arranged for someone to inspect the machine and that their help is not required.  Under no circumstances should you allow anyone you do not know or trust, access to your computer, either remotely or directly.

If you have concerns about receiving these telephone calls, are aware of any issues with your computer or would just like to have it inspected for your own peace of mind, we are always happy to discuss these types of issues with our clients.