I am, by trade, an Information Technology professional. I work with computers, and design applications that work with and over the internet. For the record. I know a bit about what I am about to say.
If you receive a call from this number, DO NOT allow them ANY KIND of access to your computer.
DO NOT:
do not - bother to talk to them
do not - let them direct you to take ANY action on your computer
do not - pay them ANYTHING
do not - by ANY means, let them direct you to go to a web site and click ANY link whatsoever
do not - be nice to them
do not - give them ANY personal information about yourself, not even your name
do not - give them any information about your computer, or your email address
do not - provide them with ANY credit card, debit card, or check information
do not - give them ANY information. They are trying to steal from you or infect your computer.
do not - listen to anything they have to say
The company associated with this number as of July 2011 is Kenoxis Systems. Kenoxis CLAIMS to be a PC support service, as well as many other things.
They are deliberately vague about their company name and who they are and what they do,
They will try to allude to being involved in some way with Microsoft and will bring your attention to several graphics at the bottom of their web page that are meant to convince you that they are somehow involved with Microsoft. The graphics are ONLY pictures on a web page. The certifications they represent are certifications for an INDIVIDUAL to begin with, not for a company. There is no proof that the people on the phone even hold those certifications in the second place.
Do not be duped by these people.
They are scam artists.. no.. actually not artists.. just scammers. They are not even that good at scamming. They use peoples' basic ignorance of the complexities of the Windows operating system against them in order to create a panic and then ask the victim to subscribe to a service contract.
Their practice is to call a home number and direct the computer owner to open the Event Viewer in Windows. The event viewer is a program that logs all of the errors that occur, on a regular basis, within the Windows operating system. As an end user, you do not SEE these errors taking place, but they happen all the time in the background. Once they have the victim looking at the "OMG.. Look at all those errors!!!" list of errors in event viewer, the scammer will tell the victim that there are many serious problems with their Windows PC, and ask them to go to a website and download remote access software and start a session so that the scammer can gain access to the target computer.
DO NOT allow them access to your computer.
Once you have, the scammer / hacker / criminal on the other end of the line has complete control over your computer.. as much as you yourself would, sitting in front of it. You will see them moving your mouse icon around and clicking on things. HOWEVER.. they can easily be loading malicious software onto your system in the background without you seeing a hint of it.
I do not know if the purpose of their scam is simply to social engineer their way in and then convince the victim to subscribe to a completely unneeded service, padding Kenoxis's pockets in the process, or if in fact they are dropping malicious programs onto target machines. The types of programs that CAN be loaded without your knowledge can do any of the following, without you ever knowing it:
* allow the scammer full access to your system whenever they want
* ruin data on your system
* scour your system for information such as credit card info, email account info, banking info, social security numbers, etc. all of which can be used to steal from you or perpetrate identity theft against you
* log your keystrokes as you perform "secure" transactions online, thereby giving the scammer your username and password to sites like your bank, your credit card, email accounts, and anything else you log on to either over the internet or locally on your machine
* use your computer as part of their illicit activities on the internet to either send massive number of spam emails to further their own ends, or use your system more nefariously to attack other systems across the internet
ABSOLUTELY DO NOT TRUST THESE PEOPLE, WHAT THEY SAY, OR THEIR INTENTIONS.
NEVER allow an unknown person access to your computer.
When someone is vague about who they are, who their company is, or what they do EXACTLY.. something is amiss.
You should ALWAYS insist on the company name, their location, their contact telephone number, the representative's full name, their extension or id, and you should ensure that you can call them back at that number. In this case, you can call them back.. but that does not mean they are who they want you to believe they are.
The individual I spoke with MISREPRESENTED himself, his company, what they do, how they do it, where they are located, and what relationship if any they have with Microsoft.
They have no relationship with Microsoft.
And frankly, although the United States really is a melting pot of cultures.. the individual I spoke with has a very distinct INDIAN accent. He is FROM India. You don't pick that accent up if you grew up in the US. It doesn't work that way. He claimed that his name was Andrew Wilson, and that he is in California.
His name is not Andrew Wilson. They don't usually name newborn boys Andrew Wilson in INDIA. They have a whole bunch of Indian names to choose from. Therefore, he misrepresented even his NAME. That is enough right there to make this person untrustworthy.
BOTTOM LINE (literally) ---> DO NOT LISTEN TO ANYONE CALLING YOU FROM THIS NUMBER.
Called my cell number. Thick Indian accent. Said he was with Microsoft and that my husband had registered my cell number with them. Wanted me to go to a web address. I asked for his phone # because it showed "unavailable" Gave me 213 261 7441. I called it from home line while he was still connected and it went to an answering machine with an undecernable message with a thick accent. I asked his name and he said Chris Nelson. (yeah, right). I hung up. He called back on my cell and my home line. I said I was reporting him to the authorities and he hung up.
Got a call today from this number trying to get into my computor and telling me they were from Microsoft and had accessesd data from my computer and it had a terrible virus on it that they needed to work on. Told them I was not interested but needed to talk to someone about this. They gave me this number and told me to call back and talk to Sebastian. Great to find out this is a scam and I did not fall for it.