How the “tech support” scam works

BoingBoing:

Security researchers at Stony Brook deliberately visited websites that try to trick visitors into thinking that their computers are broken, urging them to call a toll-free “tech support” number run by con artists that infect the victim’s computer with malware, lie to them about their computer’s security, and con them out of an average of $291 for “cleanup services.”

The researchers presented their findings — including recordings and transcripts of their interactions with the con artists — in a paper called Dial One for Scam: A Large-Scale Analysis of Technical Support Scams, which they presented at this year’s Network and Distributed Systems Security Symposium. Over the course of 60 calls, they found that the con artists all followed a narrow script. By backtracking the con artists’ connections to their PCs, the researchers were able to determine that the majority of the scammers (85%) are in India, with the remainder in the USA (10%) and Costa Rica (5%).

While the vast majority of us wouldn’t be scammed like this, it’s a good piece to pass along to those we know who may not be as technically proficient as we are.