Remote access — for a scammer

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Paradoxical as it may sound, a polite request is one of the simplest ways to get access to your computer. Intruders will use all sorts of pretexts — from technical troubleshooting to (ironically) cybercrime investigation. Learn what tricks they may use and why they are never to be trusted.

Fake tech support

One day you receive a phone call from someone addressing you by name and introducing themselves as a tech support specialist of a large software company. It turns out, they say, your computer has serious problems which must be dealt with urgently. For that purpose, you are to install a special utility program and give the caller remote access to your system. What could go wrong?

Well, in the best-case scenario, such “support” will perform some facsimile of troubleshooting activity and then charge you a fortune, like some shrewd folks from India did a while ago. Once remote access was established, they would install a useless piece of software on the target computer and demand to be paid for their “troubleshooting” work.

The clients of the British provider BT were not as lucky: Criminals were stealing their financial data and trying to withdraw money from their accounts. Curiously, in many cases scammers were targeting users who had really been plagued by connection problems and had previously contacted their provider for help. Sometimes the “tech support” would, for better leverage, wield their victims’ names, addresses, phone numbers and other private info.

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