Avast Blog Tips & Advices: Tech support scams: Tips to protect yourself

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Learn how to spot, avoid, and protect yourself from the worst tech support scams.

What could be worse than seeing this menacing message across your screen? Don’t fall for it. These “warnings” are part of prevalent online scams giving scammers and hackers remote access to your computer. In 2017, the FTC received more than 150,000 reports about these scams.

How tech support scams work

Tech support scams prey on unwitting victims by using scare tactics. They trick victims into believing their computer has been infected by malware; and that their only recourse is to pay for unnecessary technical support services that will supposedly fix the affected computer, device, platform, or software problem.

Tech support scams take many forms. But the five most common ones are phone scams, web scams, pop-up messages, email scams, and online ads. Here’s how to spot them:

* Phone scams

Scammers call you and claim to be from the technical support department of a large tech company or well-known vendor. Then they offer to help solve your computer problems. Scammers can pull your phone number from publicly available phone directories, and might even bring up other personal information when they speak with you.

Once they’ve gained your trust (or instilled a sense of fear), they direct you to a legitimate-looking website to install software or ask for your computer’s username and password to “fix” the problem. Whatever method they use, their prime directive is to convince you to give them the ability to remotely control your machine so they can infect it to carry out their sinister plan, whether it is to steal your personal data or use your machine to infect others. (Most likely, both!)

Scammers often use software that can spoof phone numbers when they call you, so they can appear legitimate, at least as far as the inbound phone number looks. They may also use stolen mobile phones to do their dirty work. The point is that you may not be able to see the scam coming because it may look like an official communication, but stay alert and aware, and if you suspect you’re being scammed, hang up.

* Web scams

Scammer companies do a number of things to seem legitimate on the web. First, they register a typosquatting domain (or URL hijacking), which relies on mistakes such as typos made when inputting a website address into a web browser (i.e. twwitter.com instead of twitter.com or Gooogle.com vs Google.com).

Visitors who stumble upon these typos quatting URLs often get redirected to web pages with malware or sent to tech support scam pages. Once there, victims are bombarded with messages, like the one above, saying that their operating system has been infected by a virus. Or the page mimics the Windows ‘Blue Screen of Death’. These sites sometimes feature official (yet unauthorized) logos from well-known software and security companies.

These tech support pages are coded with intrusive JavaScript, which won’t allow the victim to close alert windows or navigate away from the site. Like a fly on a web desperate to get free, victims often call the toll-free number to get “help” with the “computer virus” or “malware infection”.

The scammers instruct you to download a file that will allow their “technicians” to fix the problem remotely, giving them full control over your computer from a remote location. Victims are then charged between $150 to $500 for unnecessary tech support; and, what’s worse, the file that you downloaded was actually malware, which is now in your system, most likely scanning your files in search of personal info that can be used to commit identity theft.

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