Fighting the phone scammers
Microsoft has taken legal action against a phone scammer offering fake phone support for Windows and says it plans further actions in both the UK and India to address this problem.
We've all heard of this problem. You get a phone call out of the blue from someone claiming to be calling from Microsoft Technical Support, saying they have detected a virus on your PC, and offering to fix it for you. People duped by this approach hand over credit card details and not only are they scammed out of hundreds of pounds, but the scammers may also take the opportunity to install their own malicious software on the PC.
Microsoft says this problem is widespread and it estimates that worldwide the scammers pocket $1.5 billion each year. It says there are more than 50 companies operating this scam in the US alone, and that three million people were affected by these scams during 2014.
Microsoft has filed a suit against a Californian company, Omnitech Support, claiming trademark infringement, domain squatting, and deceptive business practices. In its investigation, Microsoft says that when it contacted Omnitech posing as a customer and gave the phone operator remote access to the system, the operator showed the investigator normal files which he claimed were proof of an infection. The operator then charged $249.99 to clean up the non-existent problem, and an additional $610 to tune the target system, which involved using a few free internet tools, including Microsoft's FixIt software.
In the UK, Trading Standards has previously brought a successful prosecution against phone support scammers. Last year, M K Jamil from Luton was fined £5,000, ordered to pay £5,600 in compensation, and a further £13,900 in legal costs. In addition he received a four month suspended sentence. Jamil was found guilty of hiring people at an Indian call centre to call people, tell them their computer had a serious problem, and then charge them between £35 and £150 to fix the issue. National Trading Standards said it believed this was the first successful prosecution of the Microsoft Support Scam in the UK. Welcome as this prosecution was, it is only the tip of the iceberg.
For more information about its Digital Crime Unit, Microsoft has put together a video:
28th January 2015
This article comes from the SKILLZONE email newsletter, published monthly since January 2008, and covering topics related to technology and the internet. All articles and artwork in the SKILLZONE newsletter are orignal content.