Who To Report Internet Scams To?

[lwt16]

I'm not as savvy as I once was but we had this happen years ago......

It installed a keylogger and soaked up a couple of credit card numbers. We keep a close eye on such matters and noticed a couple of strange charges pop up later. I ran a scan and sure enough, it caught two malicious programs.

Back then I think it was Ccleaner and Malwarebytes......Malwarebytes caught it. Norton was a big waste of time as it slipped right past that.

Watch your accounts.

We get reports of this constantly at work. Big waste of time as most of the ones we see are off shore and we have enough trouble getting investigators to handle local cases.

[Peally]

Can't do a damn thing about it aside from not feeding the troll on your PC. Don't call any numbers, don't be clicking anything, just wipe the virus and move on.



You can do one thing though, if you ever meet someone that writes malware for any reason break their nose for the rest of us.

[Hambo]

Install and run Malwarebytes and SuperAntiSpyware. Between the two you can catch just about anything. If your machine is really fubar, search bleepingcomputer.com for help. They have a bunch of other tools to unhide programs/documents and kill malware.

[Chance]

Something similar happened to me not too long ago.

Back then I think it was Ccleaner and Malwarebytes......Malwarebytes caught it. Norton was a big waste of time as it slipped right past that.

I'm a big fan of Malwarebytes Anti-malware (MBAM), and it's easily worth the price of the full version. Most anti-virus scanners usually don't look for this sort of stuff for reasons that have never been clear to me.

[TheRoland]

Is this something I report to my local LE agency? Would sending an email to Microsoft be a good idea? Who do I report this to?

Having worked in the industry (security, not scams), there's really nobody who cares about these sort of untargeted scam attempts. Whoever answered the phone was in a foreign country that won't enforce fraud laws unless you know a tech-savy AUSA who is looking to get into diplomacy as a side-project. If it was a US number and the accent wasn't too thick, a FTC complaint doesn't hurt, though.

Didn't click on any boxes. I called the manufacturer's tech support and they had me shut down and restart the computer and run a hardware diagnostics.

Meaning no offense, this is a bit like calling Ford because there was a fake road-sign, and they had you check your oil level. The plan for this particular scam usually doesn't call for virus infection, but you've gotten some good answers about running Malware Bytes as a general defensive measure, and I'd encourage you to do so regardless of this particular incident not requiring it.

[MistWolf]

Just keep in mind, that when it comes to computer voodoo, I don't know what I don't know, so you'll have to forgive me if I perform the computer equivalent of checking the blinker fluid level.

I am paying attention to the advice given

[Edwin]

Having worked in the industry (security, not scams), there's really nobody who cares about these sort of untargeted scam attempts. Whoever answered the phone was in a foreign country that won't enforce fraud laws unless you know a tech-savy AUSA who is looking to get into diplomacy as a side-project. If it was a US number and the accent wasn't too thick, a FTC complaint doesn't hurt, though.



Meaning no offense, this is a bit like calling Ford because there was a fake road-sign, and they had you check your oil level. The plan for this particular scam usually doesn't call for virus infection, but you've gotten some good answers about running Malware Bytes as a general defensive measure, and I'd encourage you to do so regardless of this particular incident not requiring it.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2...ve-phone-scam/