The owner of Sneakers Computers in Courtenay is warning the public about a scam that is likely coming from a call centre in India purporting to be from Microsoft.
The caller is telling people their version of Windows is reporting a computer virus, which can be cleaned out by downloading a program.
鈥淥f course it鈥檚 going to be a scam, Microsoft doesn鈥檛 do this,鈥� Richard Boyle said. 鈥淲hat鈥檚 different about this is we are actually being called. That鈥檚 what gives it a little more weight, other than the odd anonymous e-mail that might pop up on your screen 鈥� And they will talk you through the process.鈥�
Boyle has not ascertained exactly what the scammers are after but said there is a good chance they will clean out a person鈥檚 bank account, or at least take over control of a computer to harvest credit card numbers.
Boyle said he can tell it鈥檚 a scam because the caller does not have a person鈥檚 phone number.
If a computer is up to date with security software, he said the owner will be safe.
鈥淭hey know this, so they鈥檙e trying a different approach,鈥� Boyle said. 鈥淭hey鈥檙e starting to get desperate, I think.
鈥淲e鈥檝e had quite a few customers who have reported this to us. This is pretty prevalent at the moment.鈥�
reporter@comoxvalleyrecord.com
