Your PC Guy Warns – Beware of Computer Scam

Submitted by:  Shawn Klekta, Your PC Guy | Several people in the Swan River Valley have reported to Your PC Guy they have received phone calls indicating their computer may be infected.  This is a scam!  This scam is an attempt to access to your computer, install malware, steal personal information and convince you to pay for virus protection services. 

Our office received one of these calls and decided to play along …
Do not try this at home. 

The phone caller indicated they were a computer technician from The Computer Doctor and that they had received a report that our computer may be infected. They offered to help us determine if our computer was infected and guided us step by step to a place on the computer that lists System Events.  While it is normal to see warnings and errors in this list, the caller indicated this was confirmation our system was infected.  The caller then instructed us to go to a website so they could log in to our computer and fix the infection.  This is where we stopped playing along …

NEVER give a stranger remote access to your computer.

Further investigation into this scam revealed that, had we gone to the website, we would have been instructed how to provide the caller with remote access to our computer. Victims of this scam have reported having personal information and passwords stolen and malware installed on their computers. They have also reported being charged to have viruses removed and for ongoing protection.

NEVER provide personal, credit card or account info to phone callers.
PROTECT your computer with antivirus software that is updated automatically. There are good free options available.
HANG UP if you receive a phone call out of the blue from someone about your computer system’s security.