Scam story:
You are sitting at home, hanging out at your favorite website (www.fastlanepc.com) reading some awesome articles when right in the middle of a great story, your phone rings. You answer only to hear someone with a thick Indian accent telling you that your computer is infected with viruses and problems. They insist that your computer is sending their servers errors and they must be fixed. They instruct you to press the “Windows Key” plus “R” and type in “eventvwr” and press “Enter” to see PC log errors.
They assure you that all of those “Errors” are being sent to their server and this is “PROOF” that your computer is infected! Well, you start to FREAK OUT and wonder why your favorite computer guy hasn’t done his job?!?! The “technician” lets you know that by letting them work on your computer you will get a 15 year or lifetime warranty for $399.00 and they will help you 24×7. Well this is an excellent deal! You let them look at your computer by logging into your computer from India and they start doing some commands and screens that you have never seen come up and they are just wowing you! (In reality, they are pulling up random windows and typing in random commands that do nothing that have to do with errors or viruses.)
When they are done with the “slight-of-hand” work, they insist on “selling” you a lifetime subscription to an antivirus that is included in the price: Microsoft Security Essentials or AVG. (Both are free!) They will ask you to use your credit card to purchase this great deal on their secure website! You feel like something was done but WHAT? So, you call us!
YOU HAVE JUST BEEN SCAMMED! There is a couple of scamming companies that we have run into recently that have called us and our customers. The scammer company that called us was “the Technical Department” of my “Windows Computer” called Global IT at www.globalpcprotection.com. The number they called us from on the caller ID was: 999-910-0328. This number is a called a “spoof” or fake phone number commonly used by telemarketers and other scammers attempting to be legit so you are not sure who it is. The numbers this company can be reached at are: 718-593-4198 or 646-867-3751. Another number that our customers have claimed from a similar company was 253-802-0308. We found a great website documenting everything the scammer did. He is a computer tech has a computer science degree (a fellow computer geek) and he recorded the whole (6+ hours) of the scam to expose what they are doing to an unsuspecting customer. We’ve had several complaints about this scammer. If you want to check out the whole scam recorded, check out his site at: http://hackedgadgets.com/2011/10/27/hacked-ga ... lled-global-it/ (1+ hour of video) and the second part is (my favorite) where he calls the “technician” out on his scam: http://hackedgadgets.com/2011/11/23/hacked-ga ... tection-part-2/ (6+ hours of video).
Second company that we have had to deal with was a company that our customer called for tech support, thought they were getting HP Support, was Bit Resolve of www.bitresolve.com. The technician did not help our customer fix the printer issue, but did the same scam. They showed our customer the “Event Viewer” screen scaring them into purchasing a warranty to fix the problem. They remoted into the computer and installed Microsoft Security Essentials saying there was no anti-virus installed. (The customer had a good, paid anti-virus clearly running with the icon displayed in the system tray!) They charged the customer $99 for the anti-virus and $49 for the service somehow totaling $149 giving the customer the “Gold Plan.” The customer called us wanting an explanation. We called Bit Resolve and demanded a refund for our customer and let them know that they just scammed a sweet, 80 year old widow! We told them that we are contacting the credit card issuer to stop payment and take action against this scam. They quickly resolved the issue for our customer by refunding the transaction. This is the scam that made me write this article. There are a lot more people out there in this same situation and this needs to be exposed!
Bottom line, BE CAREFUL! Microsoft or any other company claiming that you are having error messages or reports coming from your computer to them is just a scam and is not true. No company can track viruses back to your computer. The only legitimate company that could say that your computer is doing this is your Internet Service Provider (ISP) like Comcast or Qwest (not Centurylink). They would never charge you to “fix” this issue either. If you need help or think you have been scammed, call us today and we can help you! 719-494-7043 or email us at
[email protected]!