Scam Phone calls

What are they? How can you tell if it is a legitimate call or not? What do you do if you get "taken".

Scam calls are phone calls (or emails or texts) from a person or company that is trying to coerce you to give them money for some reason. Sometimes they will pose as a legitimate company like Microsoft or one of its partners saying they got a message that your PC was infected and that they can help you. That's crap. They did not get alerted about it. Your computer won't just send out an alert when it has a problem. They pulled your phone number out of a directory and decided to try to scam you. Don't fall for it. Don't give them any personal info or credit card numbers unless you are convinced that they are legitimate.

To find out of if they are legitimate, ask for a phone number, verify the number by checking the web for that company and then call back to see what is going on. Even in this case be cautious until you know for a fact that it is now legitimate. It's possible that you had a maintenance contract with them in the past and you had forgotten about it until now. Again, be cautious.

If you did give them personal info and find out it was a scam, contact your credit card company as soon as possible to put a hold on your card or to cancel it and then dispute the charge. You may be able to stop payment on it but if not, then at least you are stopping them from taking any more money.

If the call or email or text is that you are now infected, do not allow them access to your computer. They may try to get info which will allow them to access your computer remotely and take it hostage and then you have a real problem. To avoid this type of problem do not open emails or click on any links in emails unless you know who it came from or can verify the link before clicking on it. Do not visit a site name or address they give you over the phone either since it will likely result in your machine being infected.

If you think you are infected, run a full scan with your antivirus tool and let it resolve the issues. If it won't run then you may already be infected and in that case you will need some help fixing it. That's something we can help with. Check out the Blog entry on Malware. Or call us.

Here are some links that may help you deal with scam calls and the after effects.

https://www.irs.gov/privacy-disclosure/report-phishing

https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/scam-phone-calls-continue-irs-identifies-five-easy-ways-to-spot-suspicious-calls