Week 7 - Security Assessment - Tech Support Scams

For this weeks’ security assessment report, I decided to talk about zdnet’s article on “Windows Warning: Tech-Support scammers are ramping up attacks, says Microsoft.” I decided on this article this week because I have personally received several of these calls myself in the recent past and have noticed an increase in these types of attacks. Not only have I received many of these attacks on my personal phone number, I have received many on my work phone number as well.


Going into the article, zdnet notes that the amount of these fake tech support calls has risen by “24 percent” (Tung, 2018) since the last year, and that reports of these calls are coming from over “183 countries” (Tung, 2018). This is an alarming trend as I had wondered in years past if these fake tech support calls would eventually die off as all the calls I have dealt with have been so painfully obvious that they were fakes. The one statistic given in the article that really surprised me was when they noted that a FBI report estimates the loses of people falling to these attacks at “$15 million” (Tung, 2018). While I could have guessed that there was a considerable amount of money lost during these scams, I would have never guessed that there was that much money being stolen. This statistic should be a warning to anyone and everyone who receives these random tech support messages to take care and not give payment information randomly.


I think the take away from this article is to be careful dealing with online tech support. While there are legitimate services out there, great care should be taken to verify that you are dealing with a qualified and actual individual and not falling to some sort of scam. One of the easiest ways to do this is to reject any calls or messages from tech support services that come out of the blue. The safest bet when dealing with these types of services is to assume that they are fake. Next, you should not install random software that the tech support company tells you to install to help you out. Most of the time these are remote control software suites that allow the scammers to gain complete and total access to your machine. Once they have control, they can hold your computer for ransom or steal important files or documents. Lastly, we should take immediate action against any tech support who requires payment in gift cards or other similar payment methods. These scammers want you to purchase these gift cards and provide them with the numbers as there is no easy way to cancel the money being removed or used. With credit cards, most of the time the company or person the card is associated to will cancel it before any major damage is done, preventing the money from getting to the scammers.


Overall, this report from Microsoft is troubling and we should take care when dealing with anyone calling themselves tech support, especially if their services come randomly to you.


Sources Cited:
Tung, L. (2018, April 23). Windows warning: Tech-support scammers are ramping up attacks, says Microsoft. Retrieved April 23, 2018, from https://www.zdnet.com/article/windows-warning-tech-support-scammers-are-ramping-up-attacks-says-microsoft/#ftag=RSSbaffb68