Virus Scam

[NewsBot]

Clicked on what I thought was a video regarding landscaping. Got a message that Microsoft was locking my PC because a trojan horse virus had been found. Called 1-833-802-8800, the number indicated on the page. Contacted someone with foreign accent named Kevin. Loud noise in the background made him terribly hard to understand. Since my system was locked, he told me to use Windows+R to run iexplore http://www.fastsupport.com. My system was running extremely slow at this point. Finally, the website appeared with GoToAssist started. He gave me a support key and took over control of my laptop. He showed me several examples of how my pc had been hacked since 6/15/18 and said the current firewall I had did not support Windows 10 (it's Trend Micro and does have support for 10). He showed me that it was currently running under Windows 8 compatibility. He said that I needed to use a better firewall, suggested Cisco and 360 Total Security. Then he showed me several packages available from "Microsoft" that I could purchase. I asked why I couldn't just run Windows firewall. He said the fact that I had the virus on my PC was proof that the Trend Micro didn't work and Windows firewall would not provide the protection I needed. The list showed a variety of packages available, the cheapest of which was $800. When I told him I worked as an IT person before I retired and I wasn't going to pay that much for software I could get cheaper, some packages not costing anything, he started backing off. At this point, we had been on the phone for over an hour. Once he put me on mute so that he could run a scan to see what damage the virus had done. As I watched, he wasn't scanning anything, just taking up my time. When I made it clear that I wasn't going to buy any software, he quickly signed off of the GoToAssist and ended my call. My pc ran just fine after he hung up. I ran several scans using different programs and nothing showed up. I deleted the GoToAssist that was still on my pc. I called the 1-833 number just to see what would happen and got a very short message that it was not in service.

I was lucky. I've worked in IT all my professional life and feel really stupid that I fell for this.

Has anyone else had this experience? If so, were you able to just shutdown your pc and start over without the system being locked?

Hope no one falls for this ever. Just a waste of time.

 

 

 

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