Orbits IT

Cold call offering Virus removal? Don’t be a victim.

There has been a scam running for the last year or 2 now, which has become far more prevalent in the last few months. Cold calling virus scaremongering!

You recieve a call out of the blue from someone kindly telling you that your PC/Laptop is infected with many virus’ and they can clean it out remotely for you for a small charge. If they have you hooked, they will get you to check your Event Viewer on your PC. In there you will probably see lots of red crosses and yellow warning triangles etc which, whilst they look scary, are probably of little concern to the average user. These callers will claim these errors are down to the virus’ and will try to get you to give them remote access to your PC so they can clean plant their own virus’ and charge you to remove them

If you recieve one of these calls then just think to yourself: ‘How could they know?!’ You haven’t run any of their software, been to their websites or asked them to investigate so unless they are God himself, they have no way of knowing what is going on with your PC.

Orbits recommend you hang up on the caller without getting into a conversation with them, however, if you feel like having some fun, here are a few ways we have had fun with them:

1) Tell them you are running Linux (an alternative Operating System to Microsoft Windows) which these scammers will have little to no knowledge of.

2) Explain that your PC is upstairs and turned off. Put them on hold while you pretend to go upstairs and turn it on etc. Try to drag this out for as long as possible – current Orbits record stands at 14 minutes and 46 seconds!

3) Ask them to call you back on another number and give them Orbits’ number 01446 678 639 – we will play with them!

Follow us

A quick overview of the topics covered in this article.

Latest articles