5 March, 2011
I am getting an increasing number of phone calls from customers who have been telephoned out of the blue in the following scenario. “Good morning, my name is blah blah and I am from the Microsoft affiliate company – blah blah & we can see that your computer is infected with viruses and is uploading more of them to the Internet”. If you are worried by this the caller then asks you to go to an Internet site and put in a code to allow them access across the Internet to your PC. They can then remote control your PC and take you to a log on your PC to show you a heap of error reports that usually mean nothing bad – but at least look really bad. At this point they normally have your trust and ask for a credit card to “get it all fixed”. Now – some of these companies are somewhat legit however if something is really wrong with your PC (viruses or grey ware/spyware) then they can only do a limited amount of work over the Internet. When we remove viruses here we often spend 30 minutes setting up a PC to do a particular scan (which we charge for) and then have to leave it scanning for even up to 4 or 5 hours (if it has a lot of software and data) – which is not charged. This cannot be done over the Internet by a caller in 10 minutes and they would have to charge too much to deliver this service in this manner. On top of this there are organisations doing this as a scam just to get your credit card details. What to do? In all cases you must have your own up-to-date virus scanner, up-to-date windows patches and a local computer technician / company that you can contact and trust. Kerr Solutions is at 128 Musgrave Street & is contactable on 49 222 400.
