Introduction

Technical Support Scam means getting people to pay to resolve fake computer problems or issues related to their customer accounts in legitimate companies like iPhone.

Lucrative

Scams have been around for many decades and will continue to flourish as long as people continue to be scammed.

Call Centre

Most of the tech support call center was located in country such as India where their targeted English speaking countries like United States, United Kingdom etc.   

How It Works

For example, you are a customer who uses the search engine for help with a malfunctioning printer and came across an online advertisement that looks like the original manufacturer website.  The scam victim would see a toll-free number to call and end up speaking with the scammers.  The scammers will then talk to the victim and get them to browse a similar website which allows them to connect to the victim computer remotely and ultimately lose money through unauthorized access to the victim personal or financial information.

Another method is a pop-up that appear on victim’s computer screens, resembling an error message from the laptop operating system or antivirus software.  The pop-up could warn of a security issue and give users a scam number to call for help.

There also scammers who may impersonate customer support staff of organizations such as bank, utilities or crypto exchanges.

Whether it is love scam, job scam or e-commerce scam, digital technology is the fundamental infrastructure that has enabled scammers to build trust with their victims before extracting money from them.

Prevention

Be wary of Foreign Speaking Accent from call center especially when they asked you to click a link which they had email or ask you to browse a particular scam look alike site as they need to connect remotely to your computer.

Avoid clicking links send to you via sms or whatsapp and never give away your banking pin number to anyone on the phone.

Conclusion

There are no ways to completely wipe out tech support scam as long as it continues to make money for the scammers.  More ever, those caught during the police operations are the tech support scam employees and not the scam business owners who can easily setup another operation in another low-cost areas and recruit cheap staff from those under develop countries.