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Hack or just a coincidence?

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Viowithcrailtap

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Posted March 13, 2013 at 12:13PM

This has happened to a friend of mine who can't access the internet now because of this problem:

My friend had a phone call from a guy claiming to be from Microsoft (to him it sounded like an Indian call centre - no offence meant by that he couldn't understand the guy very well).

The guy ("from microsoft") read out a long number that was unique to his laptop. Then he told my friend that he had quite a lot of problems on his laptop and then the guy on the phone managed to bring up a box on the laptop screen showing all these "problems".

The guy on the phone said that to fix all these "problems" it would cost my friend £85 to have all the problems solved or he lose everything on his laptop.

He is now locked out of his laptop and can't get on it with a configuration code.

When he loads up his laptop it loads up a black screen a box (that looks like it's from windows 95, but his laptop has windows 7 as the main OS) which asks for this code.

The strange thing is that he received the phone call on his house phone and they knew his full name.

Is this a strange situation or does this happen when you've done something you shouldn't have?

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Viowithcrailtap

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Posted March 13, 2013 at 3:35PM

Is there anything he can do to his laptop?

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Woolwell

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Posted March 13, 2013 at 3:40PM

Did he pay anything? If he did I suggest that he contact his credit card company as a matter of urgency.

Can he get in via safe mode?

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Viowithcrailtap

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Posted March 13, 2013 at 3:43PM

It sounds similar to that scam. My friend says he doesn't remember opening the event viewer himself but he does remember looking at the event viewer and seeing all these warnings etc.

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Viowithcrailtap

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Posted March 13, 2013 at 3:49PM

He hasn't paid anything. They tried getting money out of him but when he said he couldn't pay they just said he'd lose his computer and hung up on him. He's starting to remember possibly putting a code into his computer which was a mixture of numbers and letters then the guy on the phone asking if he'd typed it in then he had control.

Sounds similar to a team viewer programme I used in my previous job to connect to a head office in France.

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Woolwell

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Posted March 13, 2013 at 3:52PM

It is that scam with the addition of possibly adding malware that locks him out. "He's starting to remember possibly putting a code into his computer" - what else has he forgotten? The code was almost certainly giving them access. His private data could be badly compromised.

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Viowithcrailtap

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Posted March 13, 2013 at 4:02PM

That's about it. He said it happened this morning and he wasn't quite awake (great time of day to try and rip someone off). He's got nothing of value on the computer, no credit cards, his bank account has been frozen due to lack of funds.

He only uses the laptop for itunes and browsing the net. Apparently everything important is on an external Hard drive

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