Support Scam: Old Racket Still in Service

If you’re a regular reader, you may have noticed that I’ve written a lot about support scams on this blog. So while I couldn’t resist yet another, based on a twist flagged by Paul, commenting on one of my articles here, this one went up on Graham Cluley’s blog. Paul’s comment told us how he was cold-called by a scammer who tried to convince him, using the well-known ASSOC/CLSID ploy, that he (the scammer) really knew something about Paul’s PC, and that Paul should run some remote access software linked via a web site calling itself the Windows Service Center. Fortunately, Paul declined to run the software without checking it with security software, and the scammer lost his temper, thus pretty much giving the game away. It’s worth bearing in mind, though, that for this part of the scam, the fraudster usually directs the victim to a legitimate program like AMMYY, so security software won’t detect it as malware, though it may detect it as Possibly Unwanted (as ESET does the site in question) or Possibly Unsafe.



Support Scam: Old Racket Still in Service