This is an oldie but baddie that never goes away which means it must still work.
THE SCENARIO
You’re sitting at your computer. Suddenly your screen turns blue but with a message saying DO NOT TURN YOUR MACHINE OFF. Simultaneously a voice comes through the speakers issuing a scary warning.
The message on the blue screen gives an 800 number to call. When you do you will talk to a reassuring “technician”who will quote you a price to ship your computer to Microsoft for repair which will take some time or he can fix it remotely. A good tip-off here is that the price for a remote immediate repair is less than the shipped repair.
At any rate, you supply your credit card, a charge is made and hopefully the problem goes away.However, the “tech” could leave you stranded but in any case he has your credit card number, expiration date and security code. At this point you might want to call your credit card provider and cancel and reissue a new card.This is especially true if you signed up for their “monthly monitoring service.”
HOW DID THEY GET INTO YOUR COMPUTER IN THE FIRST PLACE?
There are at least three ways: Hidden in a free download, malvertising or fraudulent websites. Let’s look at each.
Download The popup software is hidden in or with your software download.
Malvertising This is a piece of software that masks the ad you clicked on and displays the blue screen warning instead
Fraudulent Website A scammer favorite. They simply register (buy) the names of favorite websites with a wrong letter. So lets say you type the web address as Americanexpres.com Instead of an error you will go to their fake website. Other names for this practice are domain squatting or typo squatting.
HOW SUCCESSFUL IS THIS SCAM?
Microsoft reports 80% of Americans had some contact with this fraud. 33% interacted with these sites and 20% lost money.
Download. Basically you download a free program. The popup software is hidden in or with your download
malvertising