Steve Smith explains why your computer may be asking to call tech support, and what not to do.
Episode #7-22 released on January 28, 2017
I am about to save a lot of you a lot of headache and cash, and this is a potentially serious issue some of you may face in the future. The issue, when your computer asks you to call tech support and provides you with a phone number to call.
Well isn't that nice, the computer is trying to help us, right? Would seem like it is a nice gesture, but under no circumstance does Microsoft provide you with such information, or allow others to do such an act. What is really happening, is you have a computer virus designed to scam you out of your money with bogus software, and worst you will be left out in the cold with all the security issues associated with their tactics.
The old method, which is still used, is to cold call you and say Microsoft has indicated your computer has a virus. This new method cuts out the cold call and leaves you with all the work. It makes the whole operation almost look like it's legit, but when is the last time Microsoft was this nice?
When you call, you will be provided with instructions, suggested products and the tech support agent at the end, will access your computer and do some tinkering, and installing of applications. Doing all this may call hundreds of dollars, and worst, the applications installed don't do anything. The instructions given to you to input into your computer make your computer less secure, and the virus is still in your computer. Meanwhile, you just exposed all your data to anyone in that office to access, and you are now at risk of fraud, and identity theft.
What should I do when I see this message? Disconnect your computer from the Internet. Hopefully, you have a full backup of all your files, but if you don't, use a Linux distribution like Ubuntu to access your personal files and transfer them to another drive. Be sure to scan the drive with an antivirus in Linux before reconnecting the drive to a Windows computer.
Then, you should reinstall from scratch, your Windows OS, making sure to delete the partitions before reinstallation. You do not have to recreate partitions after, the Windows installer will take care of this for you.
If you are wondering why I am not suggesting an antivirus solution, it is because it is too late. Best practice would be to avoid running as Administrator, and not to allow the system to change any settings, or changing them yourself. Once the settings have been changed, removing the virus will not mean you are out of danger, a clean install is the only way to guarantee your system is safe again. If you use a system with UEFI, remember to reset the PK keys, before trying to reinstall Windows, in your UEFI Bios.
Host : Steve Smith | Music : | Editor : Steve Smith | Producer : Zed Axis Dot Net