Tragic's Wake

Annnnd I got one of these scam calls today. A foreign man with a very thick accent (very obviously reading from a script) informed me that my computer has a virus and every time I turn it on I am transmitting important financial data to a dangerous entity who could then sell or trade my information for cash dollars. The reason he was calling me was to let me know that I could give him my information and he could fix this virus from off of my computer to stop this transfer of dangerous data to the illegal sources of the virus. Apparently he is the only one who can stop this and he is here to help me to fix my computer as soon as I ‘choose for to give him the pertaining information.’ He was a live user, not a robocall and I said “Well okay then, I don’t have a computer so this is obviously not a problem for me so now what then?” at which point he went silent, I could hear him breathing and shuffling and when I said “hello?” twice more I received no answer and I could hear a TV or radio playing in the background.. I hung up but wanted you to be aware of this scam. The article attached explains what the phone number is that showed on the caller ID and how people have been using it to scam.. Pass it on..

Okaaaay, it seems the original article I had linked to this post has gone *poof* into the great innerwebz ether and since I’ve noticed that a lot fo folks are looking to this post for answers, I’ll try to explain a little better here.

It seems the number is a VOIP number from Google. People can make computer to landline calls from Google much the same as the way in which Skype works. When you’ve got the Google service, the number we’re discussing here will appear on your caller ID. It’s nearly impossible to trace so it’s vitally important that you trust no one who contacts you through this number for money or services.  If these “services” were legitimate, they’d have unique phone numbers so that you could check up on them if you wished.

The most common of these scams are like the one that I encountered.. They call you and try to convince you to give them remote access to your computer so that they can supposedly “fix” it when in reality they’re using that remote access to get inside of your computer and steal your information as well as potentially install keyloggers and other really nasty software to harvest your data at a later time.

DO NOT TRUST THEM.

Hang up, warn all of your friends, and stay safe out here.

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