Warning! Cold calling Win XP scam

Mike Bantick
Friday, 12 March 2010 11:18

Business IT - Security

Obviously not getting the results they wanted through email phishing scams, it looks like cyber-criminals are turning to the telephone to get malicious software onto home computers.

There are still many home computers running Microsoft’s Windows XP operating system, and it continues to be the target of many email phishing scams.

iTWire.com has received reports of phishing scams now escalating to cold calling homes.

In one particular case in Sydney Australia, a householder was rung at home asking about her computers.  The caller, with a sub-continent accent stated that they were from a Windows Service centre, authorised by Microsoft to attend to problematic machines.

According to the caller –identified as Max - the computer had ‘called back’ to the service centre, and was downloading ‘unwanted files’.

When queried by the homeowner as to which computer was to blame, ‘Max’ stated “one running Windows XP”.  The homeowner had a desktop running Windows Vista, and a work laptop running Windows XP.  According to ‘Max’ this computer had had its OS registered for this call-back service.

The caller then asked about how old the computer was and in response to the homeowners query about the relevance of such a question, put their ‘supervisor’ – a female – onto the call (just like a normal call centre!).

The unidentified ‘supervisor’ repeated the mantra that the laptop was causing an issue and needed to be cleaned of unwanted files – despite actually being turned off at the time.

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