Sydney, Oct. 4 (ANI): Australian, American and Canadian authorities have reportedly joined forces to foil a major international phone scam, which they believe, is probably being operated from India.
The 'Microsoft Imposter' scam, which involves people pretending to be Microsoft employees offering to fix computer viruses, is thought to have ripped off tens of thousands of people in six countries.
The United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) claimed that the telemarketing schemes mostly operate from India and target English-speaking consumers in the US, Britain, Canada, Australia, Ireland and New Zealand, the Sydney Morning Herald reports.
According to the report, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), the FTC and the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) have teamed up to find the culprit behind the scam.
"With new scams appearing more frequently, our citizens need to be vigilant and not respond to insidious trickery. The best way for people to protect themselves from these types of scam calls is to simply hang up and never give an unsolicited caller access to their computer or their credit card details," ACMA Chairman, Chris Chapman, said in a statement.
The scam consists of callers who claim to work for Windows or Microsoft, and say that they have detected a virus or 'issues' with a customer's computer, following which they are asked to open a Windows Event viewer to confirm the diagnosis.
After several errors are enlisted, which are actually common and harmless, the caller then transfers the call to a technician, who then asks them to log on to a third-party website so they can remotely access their computer.
In that process, the caller may either install an antivirus programme, ask the customer's credit card details but install nothing, install malware in their computer so as to control it remotely, or access and steal personal and financial details from their computer, the report said. (ANI)
|
|
Comments:
