Stay on your toes
Microsoft has always been quite proactive when it comes to PC security, quite rightly assuming some of the responsibility, and today it has published the results into a survey into the apparently growing threat of criminals posing as security experts.
The scam goes as follows: the criminal cold-calls people at home and tells them they're at risk of some computer security threat, but it's their lucky day because we're here to help. They refer to the punter by name and claim to represent legitimate companies.
If the victim falls for this routine, they're then given a bunch of instructions, which include allowing remote access, downloading code, and supplying credit card information. Right now the scam seems to be restricted to the UK, Ireland, US and Canada.
Microsoft surveyed 7,000 computer users in these countries and found that, on average, 15 percent of the survey had received such a call, but this figure was 26 percent in Ireland. Of those who received a call 22 percent fell for it, with 79 percent of them suffering financial loss as a consequence, although it's surprising it wasn't all of them.
This loss includes money being directly taken from their accounts, compromised passwords, identity theft and subsequent problems with their PC. The average amount of money stolen was $875, but the average cost of repairing the damage to their PC was a surprisingly high $1.730.
Clearly these criminals are preying on the naive and gullible, but it's still useful for more advanced users to be aware of this growing trend, if only to warn their less techie nearest and dearest.
Meanwhile Virgin Media has announced it's working with the serious organised crime agency to try to protect its broadband customers from the SpyEye trojan variant, which collects personal and banking information, and has also targeted customers of some airlines.
