Scared & fleeced

Sangeet Toor

Aman is a deputy superintendent of police who owns a regular Windows laptop. One day a pop-up window on his computer suggested that his laptop was infected with a virus and he must call up on the given number to fix it. He panicked and called on the toll-free number. A woman picked the phone and told him that the virus was stealing credit card information from his laptop and she was able to see his credit card information, PINs and account passwords. She told him that it was very urgent that he must fix his system. She insisted that he did not need to go anywhere as her colleague can remotely fix the problem. She handed the phone to her colleague, who told Aman about the technical support help packages ranging from Rs 1,000 to Rs 10,000.

Aman decided to go with a medium package for the time being as all he wanted to do was get rid of the pop-up on his screen. But the man on the phone started pressuring him to buy the highest package as it came with a lifetime guarantee that the Windows will never get infected again. Aman was thoroughly scared and highly convinced at this point to pay money and get everything fixed once and for all. He gave remote access to his system, paid the amount and continued browsing the web. His technical problems were solved permanently.

Aman is one among 68 per cent Indians who get scammed for non-existent technical problems. Of these, 14 per cent pay for fixing a non-existent bug. According to a Microsoft survey, three out of five people fall prey to scareware, a fancy name for technical support scam, worldwide. Recently, in October 2018, police arrested around five dozen people from 26 call centers in New Delhi. The majority of scareware victims come from India, China and North Americas. The victims paid anywhere between $99 and $500 for technical problems that were never there in their systems. The scammers pretend to be technical support representatives from companies like Microsoft, Google, Apple, Symantec, etc.

You don’t have to be a below average Indian to become a victim of scareware or technical support scam. From executives at big corporations to officers at law enforcement agencies, anyone can fall prey to the sophisticated social engineering tactics used by the scammers to tap into human vulnerabilities. In general, people fear viruses in laptops and phones. The sheer number of viruses, vulnerabilities and different kinds of ‘wares’ (ransomware, malware), is confusing and intimidating. When a stranger on the phone adds another strange problem to the mix, it is natural to get more scared. The best course of action is to not engage. The second best is to never pay money to a stranger.

What should you do

• Be aware that tech companies don’t reach out to you if there is a problem. You reach out to them if you have a technical problem.
• Hang up the call if the person on the other side is trying to convince you of a problem you have never heard of. Don’t argue.
• Never reply to texts.
• Never call the number on the pop-up window or screen.
• Never give ‘remote control’ to the person on call.
• If you end up talking to the scammer, try to gather as much information as you can and report the information to the law enforcement.
• Send the same information to the company the person claimed to be the representative of.

The medium 

• By sending an alarming pop-up on computer screen with a toll-free number on it
• By infecting the operating system with malware
• By sending alarming messages through web browsers
• By sending texts
• By cold-calling people

How they scare

• Malicious page that looks like ‘blue-page of death’ takes up the whole screen
• The victim calls the number or responds to the text or the cold call
• The devastating effects of the ‘virus’ that would make the victim lose money, passwords, credit card information etc. is narrated by the scammer
• The victim is given a lifetime deal of ‘happily-ever-after’.
• The victim pays the money and the problem that never existed continues to not exist.