What is a Fake Tech Support Scam?

Fake Tech Support is a group of people who pretend to be a support team for helping you in solving all the technical problems you have in your system. They want you to believe that you have some severe viruses in your computer, and they pretend like they will help you get rid of them. They want the user to pay them for the problems that don’t even exist in your system, and most of the time, they ask you to pay through such methods where the transaction cannot be reversed once done.

How Do Fake Tech Support Interact with Users?

Fake Tech Support group interact with users through various methods, some of which include −

• Phone calls − They gain your number through some telecommunication companies and then call you pretending to be some technician from a known company. It’s a higher probability that you might have some appliance of that company in your house. Most of the time, they ask you to run a few security tests on your computer, and then they will detect some issue and ask you to pay for that problem, which in reality doesn’t even exist.

• Through pop-ups in your web browser − They also try to scam people by showing a pop-up on your screen, which generally looks like some error message from some anti-virus software. There is a high probability that they might even mimic some legitimate anti-virus company logos to gain people’s trust. That message will generally show some random number or email to call to get rid of that issue.

• Online advertisements − They often have fake websites and try to show them in the first few pages in the online tech results search page, and sometimes they even run their ads on to most visiting sites so they can get spotted by the people, and then they can fool you.

How to Prevent Fake Tech Support Scam?

The two most common things to keep in mind to not get fooled by these fake tech support teams are −

• Never will any legitimate company of tech support will try to contact you via messages or emails or calls and will inform you that there is a problem with your computer. It’s always the opposite that happens: the user who is facing a problem with its laptop will try to contact the company for help.

• Another thing to keep in mind is that all the warnings in pop-ups will never ask you to call on a particular number if they are from actual tech companies; they will always show you the solution also in that pop up if they show you the issue. That is how a genuine tech support team works.

So, if you feel that your system has some issue, first of all, run a security scan from legitimate anti-virus software, and if it detects any problem, then go to someone whom you know and trust, like the stores from where you bought your system instead of searching for them online.