News Tech support scams target victims via their ISP

Arie · 2016/06/27

A new scam, in which fraudsters pose as legitimate internet service providers to offer bogus tech support, either via the phone or on the net, is on the rise, the BBC has found.

It is a twist on an old trick which involved cold-calling a victim - often claiming to represent Microsoft - and charging for fake tech support.

The new variants have been spotted in the UK and US.

Read BBC Article

retiredlearner · 2016/07/02

Thanks for the link Arie. This is the scarey part:

How do scammers know your ISP?

In the case of cold calls it may just be a lucky case of guessing a common ISP but in the case of pop-ups, there is an altogether cleverer way for fraudsters to glean information that can help them.

How it works

Big ad networks allow users to win ad space on websites by bidding at a particular price

Criminals are taking advantage of this to place adverts which are infected with a single "bad" pixel

This pixel can redirect users and infect them in the background when they are browsing on a perfectly legitimate site - they do not even need to click on the ad

The malware in the ad redirects users to a website in the background - invisible to the user - which checks their computer and discovers their IP address

From the IP address it is easy to find out which ISP owns which IP address

Victims will be served a pop-up tailored for their specific ISP which warns them their computer is infected and gives them a number to call

Click to expand...

This is something we (users) can't control. Neil.

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News Tech support scams target victims via their ISP

Arie Administrator Administrator Staff Thread Starter

retiredlearner SuperGeek WindowsBBS Team Member

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News Tech support scams target victims via their ISP

Arie Administrator Administrator Staff Thread Starter

retiredlearner SuperGeek WindowsBBS Team Member

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