For years now we've seen reports of scammers contacting people by phone to trick them into paying up $$$ for computer technical support they don't even need.
Usually these calls are from india or the people have indian accents, they might route their calls through skype to appear local or may even have some local scam branch set up.
They say your computer has viruses and that they work for some kind of official tech support company or maybe even your ISP.
These scammers use social engineering and high pressure techniques to force people into giving away full access to their computers. People are lured into visiting a website where they must either install a program like 'teamviewer' or some other kind of remote access program.
Further requests may even include handing over your computers serial numbers or other codes on their website to verify your operating system.
They demand you pay hundreds of dollars to fix problems on your computer that might not even exist, and there's little anyone can do to stop them.
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They guide you through a few steps on your computer
1) Press Windows + R for Run Command 2) type eventvwr to open eventviewer box 3) Look at windows logs, application and system and see the scary yellow and red icons (count them. These are malicious alterations of your programs supposedly.) 4) Look into My computer/Computer properties 5) Write down the last 6 digits 6) go to their website and use the code to verify your OS
These scammers are often out of reach of the law because they manage to trick their victims into willingly handing over money without questioning things. Anyone could be at risk, but especially victims who are not technically inclined and cannot easily verify if their computer is infested with viruses in the first place.
When confronted with claims that your computer is infecting everyone else on the network, most non technical people aren't going to argue with that. Since windows computers usually do have a wide range of problems the scammers find it easy to convince their victims that these calls are from a legit tech support dept.
Companies like Microsoft who are being defrauded have a hard time collecting evidence or any useful information to help shut these organised crime support centers down.
The police and govt depts are typically clueless about how to deal with these scammers and cannot provide any real protection.
Another contributing problem is that whenever you purchase something and give out your personal information, many companies then sell your details, even if you have a private phone number or are on a do not call list. These scammers may be able to gain access to your private phone numbers because of this.
So what we need is for people to report which technical support websites they are sent to, any phone numbers, names or other details we can use to expose these criminals.
If possible it would also be great to find out which companies had access to your personal infomation for the scammers to be able to call you in the first place.
If you haven't already, please warn everyone in your family, your friends and especially those most vulnerable to this kind of scam. Don't blame the victims, not everyone is a computer expert or built with an internal anti scam warning system.
Everyone with a computer and a phone is a potential target for this type of scam, and unfortunately these scammers can be extremely convincing.
Comments and other suggestions are welcome. (Typo's are free).
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Nine months ago, a tremendous controversy began with a simple e-mail:
"Gentlemen, The BART Police require the M-Line wireless from the Trans Bay Tube Portal to the Balboa Park Station, to be shut down today between 4 pm & 8," wrote Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) construction supervisor Dirk Peter on August 11, 2011. (The Transbay Tube runs beneath the Bay, moving people to and from San Francisco; Balboa Park is a residential city neighborhood.) "Steve," the note continued, "please help to notify all carriers."
The Federal Government today revealed a wide-reaching program to substantially reform its telecommunications interception and surveillance powers with the aim of bolstering the ability of law enforcement organisations to fight crime, including the introduction of a so-called “data retention” scheme that has attracted a great deal of controversy in Australia under the ‘OzLog’ banner.
The package of reforms which are being promulgated by the Federal Attorney-General’s Department include a number of modifications to four pieces of legislation; The Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act, the Telecommunications Act, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Act and the Intelligence Services Act. (IMG:http://bluetack.co.uk/forums/style_emoticons/default//umnik.gif)
After a year-long seizure and six more months of secrecy, the court records were finally released concerning the mysterious government takedown of Dajaz1.com – a popular blog dedicated to hip hop music and culture.
The records confirm that one of the key reasons the blog remained censored for so long is that the government obtained three secret extensions of time by claiming that it was waiting for “rights holders” and later, the Recording Industry Association of America, to evaluate a "sampling of allegedly infringing content" obtained from the website and respond to other “outstanding questions.”
In other words, having goaded the government into an outrageous and very public seizure of the blog, the RIAA members refused to follow up and answer the government’s questions.
In turn, the government acted shamefully, not returning the blog or apologizing for its apparent mistake, but instead secretly asking the court to extend the seizure and deny Dajaz1 the right to seek return of is property or otherwise get due process. The government also refused to answer Congressional questions about the case.
ICE finally released the domain name in December of 2011, again with no explanation.
Equally troubling, the records confirm what was already suggested by the initial affidavit used to obtain the seizure order: that ICE, and its attorneys, are effectively acting as the hired gun of the content industry at taxpayers' expense.
The whole story is, in a word, appalling.
The only silver lining? U.S. taxpayers and their representatives have an object lesson, if one were needed, in why the government should not be granted new IP enforcement powers and why we need to reconsider the inclusion of copyright infringement as a basis for civil seizure and forfeiture.
And in the short term, maybe when Hollywood comes knocking again, ICE will remember that the RIAA isn’t such a reliable crime-fighting partner after all
Hours ago, the House of Representatives voted to approve the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), a bill that would allow companies to bypass all existing privacy law to spy on communications and pass sensitive user data to the government. EFF condemns the vote in the House and vows to continue the fight in the Senate.
"Hundreds of thousands of Internet users spoke out against this bill, and their numbers will only grow as we move this debate to the Senate. We will not stand idly by as the basic freedoms to read and speak online without the shadow of government surveillance are endangered by such overbroad legislative proposals," said Rainey Reitman, EFF Activism Director.
Despite growing resistance to the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, CISPA has cleared its first legislative hurdle. But the battle over the widely-criticized information-sharing bill is just heating up
But even before it passed, the House voted to amend the bill to actually allow even more types of private sector information to be shared with government agencies, not merely in matters of cybersecurity or national security, but in the investigation of vaguely defined cybersecurity “crimes,” “protection of individuals from the danger of death or serious bodily harm,” and cases that involve the protection of minors from exploitation.
Here's yet another broad, vague and dangerous cybersecurity bill due to be voted on soon by the US Govt, using 'protection' as an excuse to do whatever the hell they want, as usual. But now they also want companies and corporation's to track all your online activities and communications, then pass on all that data.
This week, EFF—along with a host of other civil liberties groups—are protesting the dangerous new cybersecurity bill known as CISPA that will be voted on in the House on April 23
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What is “CISPA”?
CISPA stands for The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, a cybersecurity bill written by Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) and Dutch Ruppersberger (D-MD) (H.R. 3523).
The bill purports to allow companies and the federal government to share information to prevent or defend from cyberattacks.
However, the bill expressly authorizes monitoring of our private communications, and is written so broadly that it allows companies to hand over large swaths of personal information to the government with no judicial oversight—effectively creating a “cybersecurity” loophole in all existing privacy laws.
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CISPA - would eviscerate existing privacy laws by allowing companies to voluntarily share users’ private information with the government.
You may have already heard about CISPA, the cybersecurity bill moving quickly through the House that would let companies like Google, Facebook, and AT&T snoop on our communications and hand sensitive user data to the government without a court order.
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Media coverage of CISPA :
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Since we launched, there's been an explosion of news coverage around the web. Here's a quick roundup of some of the important news coverage about "Stop Cyber Spying Week.
CISPA Could Allow Companies to Filter or Block Internet Traffic :
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One of the scariest parts of CISPA is that the bill goes above and beyond information sharing. Its definitions allow for countermeasures to be taken by private entities, and we think these provisions are ripe for abuse.
Mobile phone tracking... either learn to accept the ads and the widespread tracking that goes with it, or suffer an even worse online experience...
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The industry is on a mission to make you like the ads that know which apps you're using.
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Few smart-phone users realize it, but mobile-ad companies track them as they use many free apps. They do this in order to fine-tune the ads the users see.
But now that Apple has started to restrict a common way of tracking users, ad companies are scrambling for alternatives, and hoping to "teach" consumers to appreciate the targeted ads that support free apps.
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Nasdaq-listed mobile-ad technology company Velti this week teamed up with seven other ad companies to suggest a UDID alternative known as an ODIN.
An ODIN code is created from a smart phone's MAC address, a unique code associated with a device's Wi-Fi chip. "It will ID unique [ad views] but not tie them to devices or to people," says Velti's Krishna Subramanian, because an ODIN is a "cryptographic hash"—a scrambled version of a device's MAC address.
Some users might still object, since the ODIN is linked to a particular handset.
The Internet can breathe a sigh of relief today. In the latest twist in the long-running Viacom v. YouTube litigation, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals revived the entertainment giant’s suit against Google – but simultaneously eviscerated most of the legal theories on which the lawsuit was based.
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