My daughter's relatively new HP laptop encountered a "blue screen of death", that only a Microsoft's Windows operating system is endemic to. The HP runs Windows 7. (I'm exhilarated I abandoned anything made by Microsoft years ago.) Even my daughter, a crackerjack computer handler, was baffled. She called HP tech support. They were extremely helpful, if we discount the Indian accent. First of all, they answered her call immediately; No waiting period. They took her from step through step, carefully telling her what to do. Very friendly. At one point, their phone became unclear so my daughter hung up. In a couple of minutes the technician called back, with a clean line. How's that for service!
Finally they got everything working after having her do a restart. The technician then told her to run some program and go to a website to enter a code. The program would allow for "screen sharing", where they could control her screen remotely. She asked what for and was told they would thereby make sure everything, in fact, was okay.
She was just about to hit "Enter" when it donned on her something amiss might be happening. She hung up. She Googled the site they asked her to go to, and Googled around ("Scam phone call after technical support"), and found this indeed was a scam.
Somehow these Indian experts intercepted her call that she made to HP technical support, making believe they were HP. Imagine all the personal stuff they could then steal off your computer, like passwords and bank data, or whatever.
It occurred to me this may have been wrought by a real HP employee, probably Indian, working now at HP, who passed on the call, and/or my daughter's number, to relatives in India.
Just thought you should know.
1 comment:
wow, no more Indian tech assistance whether for computers, phones, or banking!!
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