APPnox » Fall http://www.appnox.com All about Applications! Wed, 08 Feb 2012 16:47:08 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3 Cold Calling Computer Technicians: Don’t Fall For A Scam Like This [Scam Alert!] http://www.appnox.com/cold-calling-computer-technicians-don%e2%80%99t-fall-for-a-scam-like-this-scam-alert/ http://www.appnox.com/cold-calling-computer-technicians-don%e2%80%99t-fall-for-a-scam-like-this-scam-alert/#comments Fri, 16 Sep 2011 01:47:28 +0000 admin http://www.appnox.com/cold-calling-computer-technicians-don%e2%80%99t-fall-for-a-scam-like-this-scam-alert/ class="align-right" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/intro1.jpg" alt="" />You’ve probably heard the term “don’t scam a scammer” but I’ve always been fond of “don’t scam a tech writer” myself. I’m not saying we’re infallible, but if your scam involves the Internet, a href="../service/windows">Windows PC and a cold calling technician, it won’t take long for the penny to drop.

I’m basing this article on my experience with a would-be scammer who called my parents house last week. This isn’t the first time Mr Windows Repair Guy has so helpfully graced us with his detailed instructions, and this time I was determined to find out exactly what the deal was.

Tell your friends, tell your relatives – Microsoft does not call to fix your PC.

The Call

When the phone rang, the guy on the other end claimed to be from “Windows Technical Support”. Many people would probably notice that something is awry at this point, as Microsoft isn’t known for cold calling to tell you there’s a problem with your computer. Straight away I knew it was the good old “you’ve got viruses, and we can fix ‘em” scam, so instead of the “where’s the Start button on my Linux desktop?” routine I had fun with last time, I thought I’d play along.

I was informed that Microsoft had detected that I had viruses on my computer, and that if I didn’t follow his advice to remove them, my computer could “crash unexpectedly at any time” (tell me something I don’t know).

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So I sat down at my parents’ new Windows 7 machine and asked him what sort of viruses I had. He told me to click on Start, right-click on Computer and choose Manage. Then I was told to click Event Viewer, Custom Views then Administrative Events.

This is where the scam gets somewhat believable. This screen displays a log of messages from various services and programs running on your PC. At first glance, there are a lot of red crosses and warning triangles, which could probably look quite serious to an average user.

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Apparently, these were my viruses!

The Fix

I was then asked if I could delete any of these new-found viruses with a simple right-click and Delete. As we all know by now – these aren’t viruses. Additionally, you can’t remove the log with the right-click context menu, so I guess they’re just here to stay?

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Of course the fix was only round the corner. Once I’d informed my new best friend that I couldn’t remove them, he told me to open Internet Explorer (!) and assured me there was software available to help victims like me.

The website I was told to visit was AMMYY.com (which we are not linking to), but the software didn’t seem to match up. This website claims to provide a remote desktop solution, not the malware dressed up as security software I was expecting.

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At this point I had been on the phone for a good 15 minutes, with much of the conversation lost in translation as I struggled to understand the heavy Indian accent. I had words, informed him that I knew exactly what was going on and would be reporting the incident to BT (the telephone provider) as well as shaming him in any way possible and bid him adieu.

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Didn’t stop him calling back immediately though did it?

The Cost

There are a plethora of reasons you shouldn’t trust a cold caller, but even more so when it comes to your PC, your personal information and suspicious software. The costs associated with someone gaining remote access to your computer could be devastating. Sensitive information relating to bank accounts, passwords for paid services and documents that could be used to href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/9-ways-prevent-identity-theft-computer-hackers-2/">forge an identity could be stolen.

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Goods could be ordered via services that save your billing information and any sites that remember logins will be easily accessible. In addition to theft, safeguards like anti-virus programs might be disabled and further malicious software like keyloggers and trojans could be installed.

There is unfortunately very little that can be done to combat these scams. I phoned BT and was told that the numbers from this type of call are virtually untraceable, but calls came from “somewhere in Asia” and were a persistent problem. If the perpetrators are using href="../tags/voip">VoIP services like Skype, the calls are not easy to trace, and it’s not impossible to use a ringback service to href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/top-8-online-tools-to-identify-the-owner-of-a-phone-number/">decipher the number.

Conclusion

Hopefully this article has provided some brief insight into this kind of scam, which is prevalent all over the world. Unless you fancy becoming part of the big bad botnet, you’d better never trust a caller like this. Variations are common – sometimes it’s bogus anti-virus software that requires payment, or similar – so remain vigilant.

I’m not sure whether AMMYY.com are a legitimate company or not, but Panda’s Firefox plugin doesn’t rate the website and nor does a quick Google search which brings up all sorts of “scam” notices. I’m going to recommend that nobody uses an AMMYY.com product, purely on the basis that there are href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/7-easy-screen-sharing-and-remote-access-tools-all-free/">lots of quality proven alternatives that aren’t linked to dishonest individuals who want your money, data and bandwidth.

Have you had any phone calls like this? Do you know anyone who has? Consider sharing this article, and spreading the word. Comments and discussion are welcome below this article.



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]]> http://www.appnox.com/cold-calling-computer-technicians-don%e2%80%99t-fall-for-a-scam-like-this-scam-alert/feed/ 0 9 Free Webmaster Tools You Can Fall In Love With http://www.appnox.com/9-free-webmaster-tools-you-can-fall-in-love-with/ http://www.appnox.com/9-free-webmaster-tools-you-can-fall-in-love-with/#comments Wed, 28 Jul 2010 21:30:36 +0000 admin http://www.appnox.com/9-free-webmaster-tools-you-can-fall-in-love-with/ Webmasters and developers don’t need a whole lot of money to spend on tools in order to work efficiently and be productive. Here is a list of free tools that help me run my everyday webmaster chores.


Notepad++


Dreamweaver and such designing tools might have become very advanced in the recent years but I am still far from satisfied with them. I prefer to do the coding with a simple text editor and be in total control of the code and not end up with unnecessarily long code. Recently I discoverd Notepad++ which has the few bells and whistles that are desired by hard core programmers such as code highlighting, Regular Expression Search/Replace support, capability to extend functionality with plugins and nice depository of contributed ones. Worth your attention.


Filezilla


If you are like me and don’t use WYSIWYG editors to do your HTML/CSS designs then you are probably need or are already using a standalone FTP client to upload/download files to and from your server. Filezilla is a free tool that I have been using for some time and has not failed me. New version 3 has lots of new features, if you are FTPing stuff often maybe you should check it out.


Xampp


XAMPP is an apache server distribution that integrates php, mysql, phpmyadmin and a bunch of other great open source projects into an easy installation. It can be used on production servers to host one’s sites but I mostly use it locally to code and test my html/css/php projects. Its easier to develop locally because there is no need to upload files on servers everytime, and only upload when your project is complete. It can be installed on Windows/Linux and lots of other platforms and if you are serious about developing you should get it installed in your computer and start playing with it.


Google Analytics


Google analytics is a free website statistics package that anyone can easily integrate into their website in a few minutes. Analytics once installed on your website it gathers data and presents you with reports about which sites your visitors come from, what country they live in, how long they stayed on your site, which pages were more popular and a whole lot of reports that you will likely not need another statistics package for you site. Those statistics are vital to the progress of any site in order to understand a site’s audience and find things that might need to be improved. You can create as many analytics accounts as you like (unlimited number of sites) as long as your total pageviews don’t exceed the monthly allowance of 5 million.


Firefox


Mozilla Firefox is not only a great browser to surf with. Firefox was build with extensibility in mind and has given developers a way to extent its functionality with add-ons. Add-ons can enhance the capabilities of Firefox and enhance the browsing experience. There is a whole lot of add-ons in the Mozilla repository that can help you with task such as bookmarking, searching, social interaction, developing, news reading, downloading to name just a few categories. Some of the following favorite tools of mine are actually Mozilla Add-ons. Its definetelly worth your attention.


SeoQuake


Seoquake is a Mozilla add-on that was created with the SEO professionals in mind. It will help you gather important statistics about a website or web page with the touch of a button. Such statistics include PageRank, indexed pages, google backlinks, Cached date etc. One can also extend it/configure it to gather other important statistics from online services not already included in it.


Firebug


Firebug is yet another Mozilla Add-on; a webmaster tool that can help you understand and debug your javascripts. It has so many bells and whistles that I am thinking of devoting a whole article on it. I will just mention the features that I use myself; Inspecting and editing HTML and CSS on the fly, debugging and running javascript on the fly, monitor network activity but there are many others. Here is a video tutorial I recently found that will help you get started with firebug debugging


Gimp


Gimp is an open source image manipulation package that can help you with photo retouching, image composition, format conversion and animations among other things. Its not likely to replace adobe photoshop any time soon but its a free alternative that has found many followers and through its plugin architecture promises to built the only image manipulation tool you will ever need. Some of its features are presented in a way of a presentation but nothing can convince you better than to actually install it and try it on your own.


Drupal


Drupal is a content management system much like wordpress but a lot more extensible. WordPress is a good CMS (content management system) for simple sites and even though it has many plugins to extend its capabilities I would not recommend building anything other than a blog with it. Drupal on the other hand was built in such a way to be extensible. A programmer digging in its code will appreciate its flexibility, code quality, and modular design and simplicity for writing a new module. Drupal is was build from the ground up a tool for building community sites, and as a result it has many features to support such sites but it is also capable for supporting standard websites. Its learning curve is quite steep but it pays off in the end. Worth more than a look from you.

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