SOLVED Account Crashed and voice says to call Windows assistant.

[datolgranny]

Screens started popping up and a voice telling me someone was accessing m account illegally, There was a black screen with a number (I supposedly had to call). When I called and askedfor id, he stated his name was Alex, He did end up hooking into my account and told me I did not have McAfee(?). I understand this is a protective service (which I believe I had). Anyway, he said if my laptop were newer he could assist me. Because it is no longer under warranty he would have to charge me $149.00 ...Blah,,,,,Blah.....Blah. I did not agree to pay as I wanted more information first. Did I fall for a scam by calling that number or does Windows provide such a service. It sure didn' seem legit. He also said I should not disregard it and take care of it asap.

 

[Regedit32]

Hi datolgranny,

Microsoft does not promote competitor security software ever, nor to they charge for assistance unless you have elevated your need for help - which would only occur after a minimum of 4 weeks.

There are numerous variations of the false alerts and I believe this is what you saw [ especially if you were using an internet browser at the time the alert appeared ].

Microsoft have posted a dedicated article on these security scams, which you can read here;

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/wdsi/threats/support-scams


If you allowed Alex to remotely gain access to your computer, I'd recommend you do a thorough scan of your computer for virus or trojans he may have installed, and if you keep passwords for banking etc on your computer it would be wise to change these ASAP.

Regards,

Regedit32

 

[datolgranny]

Thank you for your help. I really thought I was a lot smarter than that. Creepy Creeps!

 

[brokensoftware]

Did I fall for a scam by calling that number

Unfortunately yes.

An adserver (or two ...or three...) is serving the scam pages when you visit entirely legitimate web pages - I know for a fact that CNN, YAHOO, and Weatherunderground (wunderground) use third-party adservers that serve these scam pages; I'm sure that many more sites also are using the same adservers that serve up these bogus "ads" that turn into scam pages that take over your computer - note that they take over your computer not by actually taking over your computer, but instead by opening pages so fast you cannot do anything INCLUDING shut down your browser - alt-tab usually works, however, so you can kill it that way.

The adservers are NOT the guilty ones, BTW - they are simply serving ads (for example, it's quite possible that one of Google's adservers served at least one of the scam pages). I found that the only way to stop the scam pages from showing up was to install an adblocker - that stops ALL ads, of course, so may not be what you want - and some sites, such as Forbes, stop serving their own pages if you block their ads. Yesterday I temporarily disabled my adblocker because I wanted to view a Forbes page redirected from Yahoo and, before I could click on the Yahoo page's link to Forbes, a Yahoo adserver had already served up one of these scam pages.

Before I blocked all ads I noted down a group of sites served from just sitting on a Yahoo page that I believe were the source of the scam pages (at least indirectly if not directly). This is NOT a complete set, of course:

softwarecentraldownload dot com/campaign/problem6

nextoptim dot com/script/packcpm.php

tracking.beginads dot com/

maturetubex dot com/category/All/ctr/9/

xctraffic dot com/in/__x_skim_ts/

www.heresurvey dot com/

engine.spotscenered dot info/Redirect.eng

There are related bogus pages served up on mundane sites that open a new tab, switch to it, and present a "survey" from what appears to be your ISP; your ISP, however, has nothing to do with these "surveys".

 

[GH1]

Had similar happen to me when I rang the wrong number for Nortons and got a supposed genuine Norton Support rep.
I foolishly let him into my machine and then realised it was not the genuine Nortons.

After that I rang and locked my bank accounts and then downloaded an ISO of WIn 10 and did a reinstall after saving my emails and history etc.
Hopefully that has fixed things and all my passwords have been changed by using a different machine to do that.
I dont save anything to my C drive so can do a new install without losing much.