Was my friend scammed? How to determine? Sorry, long.

13 years ago

A friend of mine e-mailed me about three days ago and was extremely upset. Said her Hotmail (which is her PRIMARY e-mail) had been hacked. She couldn't get into her Hotmail and couldn't remember her "secret question" answers because she had set it up back in the 90's. Then she went on to elaborate that she and her husband called Hotmail. Don't know where they got the number. The e-mail said "they farm out their customer service." Said "they" took control of her computer and she and hubby watched the cursor doing things. (I'm familiar with my son working on mine from his house in the same way, and the first time it IS amazing.) Went on to say "cost us $321 and now they have AVG to protect everything and it's OK." They called and cancelled all their credit cards, etc. Something sounds fishy to me. I know for a fact, you can get AVG free, but am not sure which version she got. She said that they checked all their cancelled credit card today and there had not been any other charges. The last one was the $321 one they authorized. I think they've been a victim of a scam. Anything I should advise her?

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Comments (8)

azinoh
13 years ago
Not enough information to determine exactly what occurred.
If the user thinks she is now "okay" because she now has AVG, I submit she is mistaken.
Sounds like both of them are not knowledgeable enough to protect themselves adequately. I suggest more education on safe computing. The alternative would be not using a computer.
sushipup1
13 years ago
They were absolutely scammed. Not sure of the details, like azinoh said, but yes they've been taken for at least $321 plus the fact that their entire computer now is in someone else's hands. Tell them to go to a real life honest shop in their home (NOT a big-box store's Geeks) and see if they can get some hand-holding.

The brains that hang out around this forum are probably too advanced for your friends (sorry, gang, but these people need ABC instruction!). They need hand-holding.

They are now loaded with more trojans, viruses, etc, not to mention the stolen information of all other sorts.

Sigh.
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sushipup1
13 years ago
Try googling "Hotmail+scam".

Here's more:

Here is a link that might be useful: how to recognize scams

This post was edited by sushipup on Fri, Feb 22, 13 at 18:13
mikie_gw
13 years ago
They should be talking to their bank or credit card company to see if they can get the money back.
ravencajun Zone 8b TX
13 years ago
absolutely a scam and they need to contact that credit card company and tell them they were scammed, they need to know they should not be paying out for that.

I would doubt seriously they actually have AVG even and probably just the free or trial version that anyone can get.

It is a good probability they now have backdoors and rootkits and should not use that PC for anything especially bank related.
However in many cases they won't listen to reasoning. We see it all the time.
kudzu9
13 years ago
Very likely they were scammed. They did not get any kind of Microsoft or Hotmail Tech Support, especially for $321.

I'm wondering if your friend fell for some phishing scheme prior to this event that allowed her Hotmail account to be hacked, and then responded to it by unknowingly contacting the hacker (ask her if she had any popup messages she clicked on). It would be telling to find out where they actually got the phone number they think connected them to Hotmail. Perhaps from a Google search that faked them into contacting a bogus tech support site?

At this point I believe that:
1) Best case: they got a scammer who charged a lot of money for not doing much of anything.
2) Worst case...most likely case: they got a scammer/hacker who charged a lot of money for not doing much of anything, and put a bunch of malware on the computer.
It's sad, but this is a problem that occurs frequently with people who don't take the trouble to learn the basics of online safety.

I also agree that they need someone knowledgeable to go over their computer with a finetooth comb. Otherwise their problems could even get worse.
skibee
13 years ago
if they have windows 7- i would just do a factory re-.set..the program is e-recovery...
u don't need a recovery disc..it's made right in the system,
Thank God ~ i have already used it bout 5 times...
i'm always messing w/ the " services" thru adminstrator
tools..~*
svejkovat
13 years ago
Twice this month I've gotten the telephone call from
"MIcrosoft's Security Services Department". I asked for a little more by way of credentials, just for fun, and the caller said he was not actually a Microsoft employee, but his company is a subsidiary that runs MS security for all of its consumer software. That's right folks... Microsoft security is run by these guys.

He told me that my computer has been showing up on their networks displaying security breaches and that if I have it nearby would I please start it and go to such and such a url so that I could log him into it from my end.

I started laughing at him and he slammed the phone down on me.

Was my friend scammed? How to determine? Sorry, long.

Comments (8)

azinoh

sushipup1

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