Americans to lose $1.5 billion to common scam in 2015, says Microsoft

Source: www.afterdawn.com --- Thursday, October 01, 2015
Are you one of the estimated 3.3 million Americans caught up in this common scam this year? If you haven't been targeted with it, you likely know friends or family who have been. It is simple, but very effective and common enough that Microsoft feels the need to educate the public about it. It would work something like this: You receive a phone call from an unknown or blocked number, and a polite sounding person on the other end is revealed as an employee of Microsoft, calling to inform you that your PC or other device has been compromised with malicious software. The polite employee then offers to help. At this point, you may be asked to follow instructions that will either take you deep into your operating system settings, or to a webpage where you can download a client that will allow this nice person to fix your problem for you. The software will allow the other person access to your computer. After this point however, things will likely take a clearly suspicious turn as you will inevitably be enlightened on the fee you will need to pay for fix the "problem". It would not be uncommon for your device to be locked at this point until you pay the fee, and unfortunately a lot of people do pay up. So many pay up, in fact, that Microsoft predicts that tech support scams of this nature will hit an estimated 3.3 million Americans this year, and generate $1.5 billion for the scammers. Don't ever trust cold callers It should seem obvio ...

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