Teamviewer scam?

Has anybody experienced the teamviewer scam before, where a technician (from HP, Microsoft, etc) claims to notice a lot of viruses or fraud coming from your IP address and wants you to install teamviewer?

I just got this call from a guy claiming to be an HP tech, and he claimed that someone was stealing a lot of data from my IP address. I was a bit skeptical to begin with, but I hung up when I asked him if he meant my HP pavilion notebook (I own an envy ultrabook). I'm only curious how he knew to mimic an HP tech, or if that was just a coincidence.

 

I have not but apparently this has been going on for a while Teamviewer scam - beware - Windows 7 Help Forums

 

Probably a variant of this scam: “I am calling you from Windows”: A tech support scammer dials Ars Technica | Ars Technica. Most likely a shot in the dark and they chose HP since it's one of the biggest computer OEM.

 

Well for the first "RED" flag would be telling you your IP address is causing virus to be made should make one suspicious already!!!! Next would ask for their employee name and number and then ask to talk to their manager and if they refused tell them you will call their phone number the one listed on their officical company website not a offsite or unknown phone number. And then go to the website and then lookup their customer site and call that number and ask for whom is this employee and why are they calling you. That way you will force the scammer to identify themselves and you can report it to the authorities in that company of the fraud. We all have to be a little more savvy here and ask questions when calls like this is made and not give out personnel or banking info to any such person asking without written confirmation or you should confirm this yourself by calling the "REAL" company and asking. These are simple steps to do and shouldn't take a rocket scientist to do this.

 

I had a lady friend get caught with this scam. She is not computer knowledgeable and that call from MS bricked her computer.

 

So I guess it's a good idea to disconnect from the Internet if such call occurs.

 

Not really, it's not like they can access your computer unless you let them so you just have to know it's a scam.

 

I guess. But in case your computer gets compromised it would help somewhat. That link you've posted before, I read some comment that scammrs locked someone's computer after he refused to pay any more (he already had paid them $500).

 

If you have their phone number, forward it to the FBI, and let them know that that's what you'll do.

 

Yeah, but by that point, he already fell for the scam and even offline the computer was locked if I understood correctly. My point was don't fall for the scam, NBR regulars won't obviously, but tell your family about those kind of scams, same as warning them away from scamware promising to help speed up computers.

Pirx also has a point, depending on where they're operating, your government might be able to get back at them.

Some people make a point of trolling those scammers too, like installing Windows in Dutch in a VM and giving them access to that. There's also a British reported that got called by one of those scamers, that story was pretty funny too.

 

if someone has already fallen for this then the first thing they need to do is nuke their hard drive with dban and re install their operating system. this is the only way you will know for sure that these scumbags are gone and your computer is safe. once youve clicked on that link you give them permission to do whatever they want on your network.

 

That's OK for the people that know computers. My lady friend didn't and took hers to a repair shop and $100 later they had it fixed. I asked her what they did and she said they cleaned it up and that was all they said. When she got the call previously from the MS tech, he told her that her ISP had called them complaining about a virus on her computer. They could fix it if she let them download something to her computer so that they could remove that virus. She told me the MS guy sounded like he knew what he was talking about with the ISP words and other technical jargon so she let them. Way too many people that just use their computers for email and know nothing about the inner workings of a computer.

 

its sad but true. that is why these people start up these fraudulent cold calls as they know some people will fall for them. even if its 1 in 100 its worth their while. as once they are on one persons computer they can spread the same thing to millions in a few hours. one loaded mass emailer on that persons computer and for example they have 100 contacts in their email accounts and all their contacts have 100 email contacts. the fake email will send it to all them 100. and then automatically send it to all 100 friends emails and so on and so on.
so in easy terms 100 x 100 x 1000 = 10000000 affected in a few hours.

 

On a side note, if I have a full image backup that I know is free of infection, do I still need to wipe the Hard drive before restoring from it; if I get an infection as discussed here?
Thanks Pirx

vvvvv

 

No, that's not necessary.

 

What program was used to create that image? Or are we talking about the hidden recovery windows partition? For my usage I keep a backup clean image that was created for my custom install and updated the image each time by rebooting the last created updated image and then updating that rebooted image with new updates and made a new image based on there to store on my external HDD. That how I prevent any infection from taking over my computer or should I replace the HDD I can just boot back from the ext HDD and restart and begin using the computer.

 

If you're lucky enough to catch one that's dumb enough to both operate out of the USA and use an actual phone, that is.

Unfortunately, most of them use VoIP, partially for the anonymity it provides and partially so that the scammer can call as many people as they want without having to pay long distance charges. On top of that, many of these scams are operated out of countries like Russia and Nigeria, which are not exactly known for having strong legal systems. And even if you somehow manage to track them down, international legal cases tend to be extremely tricky, and that's for serious crimes like murder.

Honestly, I just don't think it's worth the effort when you can simply hang up on them. Time is money, and chances are that your time is much more valuable than the scammer's.

 

the way ive managed to slow the number of calls im getting lately is

if its a virus hoax from windows i say thats interesting as i dont own a computer and never have.
if its a you have had a car accident in the last 3 years and we are here to help you i say i have never owned a car.

it used to be every other day i would get a cold call. now its once every couple of weeks.

 

From what I can tell they use Flash to lock the computer (that FBI warning and hijackware). If you have another login use that and then immediately get rid of the lock screen that was implemented. had to do this 3 times for family systems..............

 

I recall someone had prepared a bait for such scammer. He had a compressed folder named "Passwords" on his desktop, and that folder was full of every renamed viruses and malware he could get his hands on.

So he allowed the scammer to enable remote desktop, and watched the scammer copy the folder to his computer before suddenly disconnecting the phone call and the remote desktop connection.

 

now that sounds like a dalm good idea. play them at their own game

 

Yeah, I don't remember where I read that, but I came across that too.

 

Team viewer is most popular software for every networking base person. But it has a problem. You anyone can hake your data from your PC. So be careful.

 

This is a total scam. See the following blog where they show the entire scam process that you are taken through, ask for money and even up to where they are deleting your files!
Phone tech support scam goes wrong | Malwarebytes Unpacked
Beware of scamers using TeamViewer to hack your PC and take your money.