Tech-support scams, in which fraudsters pose as computer technicians who charge hefty fees to fix non-existent malware infections, have been a nuisance for years.
A relatively new one targeting Dell computer owners is notable because the criminals behind it use private customer details to trick their marks into thinking the calls come from authorized Dell personnel. "What made the calls interesting was that they had all the information about my computer; model number, serial number, and notably the last item I had called Dell technical support about my optical drive," Joseph B. wrote in an e-mail.
Read moreTech support scammers have mocked up a web page with an even more dire version of Microsoft’s infamous Blue Screen of Death error page.
The website, registered behind an anonymity service, wants to convince surfers tricked into visiting it that their PC has been derailed in order to dupe prospective marks into phoning scammers, who will attempt to extract a big fat fee for solving non-existent problems. Victims are lured to scam pages via either spam messages or malicious advert redirects. Surfers with Javascript enabled will get nagged with a pop-up message featuring an even more dire warning until they kill the browser instance.
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