AVG says 'beware of geeks bearing grifts'

David Heath
Tuesday, 07 September 2010 13:43

Your IT - Home IT

If you receive an unsolicited phone call or email suggesting that your PC is infected and offering to help, just say 'no.'

AVG has advised iTWire of a number of scams involving unknown persons claiming to represent the security software company and insisting they scan the target PC for malware.  Strangely enough, they find some and attempt to sell software to repair the problems.

iTWire has previously reported on such scams, but they seem to be getting more sophisticated.

Generically, the scam has a number of forms:

The unsuspecting victim is duped into purchasing a non-legitimate copy of legitimate software (AVG has instances of an Indian-purchased 10-user licence being installed on target PCs in Australia via a telephone scam).

The victim pays enormous amounts of money for remote support using LogMeIn or TeamView (for instance) to 'find' problems.

Other scams have also included the downloading of malware-infested (supposed) anti-virus software.

In addition to claims to represent themselves, AVG also advises of a number of fake company names being used.  These include Tech Optimizers, Techisonline, Support on Click, The Repair Zone, Online PC Doctors, Microsoft Certified Engineers, Windows and Bigpond.