Have I been scammed?

[Guest ColinCottell]

I had a call from a company who said their certified technicians had carried out an audit on my computer and had spotted 'suspicious activity'. The company said they were systems administrators for Microsoft Windows. Apparently they were able to do this is through Event Viewer, which sends them various error reports and warnings about people's computers to the technical server. They said they were my service station. I don't beIieve that any such reports are ever sent to any third party companies, but what does the Community think?

 

 

My subsequent understanding is that these error reports are the normal state of affairs for all computers, and with this company knowing this there was a good chance that when I let them look at my computer (which I sadly did) this would be confirmed. The company said it used a Microsoft cleaning tool, which got rid of more than 3,000 'viruses' and then said it had put in a network firewall. They said that my third party security software Mcafee or Norton didn't work. I told them that I didn't have any external third party security software and I already had Microsoft Defender but they went ahead with the cleansing anyway, and it seemed (in front of my own eyes actually) to reduce the number of viruses (that is what they called them, anyway) to one.

 

 

The guy than persuaded me to part with £415.95 for lifetime technical support. The odd thing is the phone numbers the company gave me are legitimate, they have given me their address, and a senior certified engineers even called me back to discuss my concerns.

 

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