Last month we talked about the Microsoft Support scam that has been making the rounds.
Unfortunately it seems that this scam is still going strong.
What can you do if you fall victim to this scam?
First, don’t beat yourself up. You’re not the first person to fall for this, and you unfortunately probably won’t be the last.
Next, if you’ve given the person that you spoke to a payment or any kind of financial information, call your bank. A lot of times, after receiving your credit card number, these con men will then go on to sell your personal information to other less-than-scrupulous people. Your bank can help you cancel your card, issue you a new one, and possibly be able to assist you in reversing any charges made by the scammers.
At this point, it’s not a bad idea to file a report with the Police Department of Sherriff’s Office. Your bank may require a copy of an incident report in order to get any of your money back for you. Also, the Police Department or Sherriff’s Office can issue community alerts to warn the public of these scams, helping to keep other people from falling victim to this con.
If you allowed these rip-off artists access to your computer, you’re going to want to have it checked for malware. It’s fairly common for these jerks to install some sort of malicious software onto the computer that they gain access to. Anything from keyloggers that report a every keystroke that a user makes back to the scammer, to ransomware that encrypts a users data in an attempt to blackmail the user into shelling out more money for a decryption key.
If you’ve fallen for this all-to-common scam, the best thing you can do to mitigate the damage is to act quickly, and follow these steps.
If you have any questions, or want to learn how to keep yourself and your family safe from this, and other online scams, fell free to call us here at No Ware Computer Repair.