Latest News > 29 July 10 - UK police close in on PC support fraudsters

 

A police crackdown has led to the closure of several websites linked to a scam offering unnecessary PC 'support'.


The Metropolitan police force's Police Central e-crime Unit (PCeCU) closed 19 websites linked to the scam in April. This action was taken because of the belief that offences were being carried out under the Fraud Act.


Despite this action, the fraudsters continue to plague consumers. Emails from readers show many other sites offering dubious computer support are still active, or being created. The evidence that we have gained clearly shows fraudulent activity.


Victims of the scam receive a cold call from India. The callers say they have been alerted to the fact that the person's PC has been infected with malicious software.


Our latest investigation into this ongoing scam started when a member of our team received such a call at home from a company calling itself Click2support, which claimed to be a department of Microsoft. On subsequent calls that we recorded, our undercover reporter paid £89 for security software from this company, which Click2support said was worth £300.


However, our PC was virus-free and we discovered that the software Click2support installed is available free. The software manufacturer, Iobit, told us that it had never heard of Click2support. Iobit said it was not associated with the company and reserved "the right to take further legal actions against Click2support".


Click2support later claimed that our bank card payment had not arrived and asked us to pay again via Paypal. Transactions on the bank card used also suggest the fraudsters may have attempted to link it to another Paypal account.


Although we have traced emails from the company to an address in New Dehli, India, we have discovered that Click2support is 'owned' by a company called MIT Global Ltd, which has a registered address in Blackburn, Lancashire. Emails sent to MIT Global were answered by Click2support.


We contacted Blackburn Trading Standards, which is now investigating the company.
MIT Global denied claiming to be part of Microsoft and blamed its outsourced call centre for claiming to work for that company. We were told Mr Amjad Ali, the director of MIT Global, would call us but despite repeated requests he has not yet done so.


How the cold-call support scam works

The computer support scammers seem to change their names and website addresses almost daily, but the methods they use stay the same.

The scam begins when a cold-caller from an Indian call centre phones the victim at home, saying there is a problem with their home computer.


Sometimes the callers claim to be working for Microsoft. Often they claim to have received error reports sent by Windows. Neither is true.


Next they ask to prove that the computer is infected. Often they ask the victim to open the Event Viewer. This will always show harmless errors, but the caller claims they are the result of malicious attacks.


Other similar tricks involve asking the victim to display the Prefetch folder and claiming the files inside are infections.


Once the victim is convinced that their computer is infected, the company offers to fix it - for a fee, of course. In our investigation we were billed approximately £90 by bank card.


If the victim does pay, they are provided with software that is supposed to 'fix' the computer's problems. In our investigation all the software provided is available online at no cost.







 

 

 

 

 

 

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