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And why these actionable security measures will help you stay safe

Scam phone calls are anything but new. You may even think they’ve almost become extinct. Even if it’s great to watch them decrease year by year, we hate to admit they are still happening.

One day you may get a call from a friendly and overly-polite support technician, who claims your computer has been infected with malware. This person will promise to fix your PC in exchange for an amount of money, or may purposely install malware without your knowledge. Or in most cases, both.

Scam phone calls are one of the most frequent scams. You could always be the next victim, so in this article, we explain how they happen and give you some actionable tips on how to stay safe.

Who gets targeted and why?

Scammers mostly try to take advantage of novice computer users.

At the same time, they pretend to be representatives of authority figures, such as well-known and reputable brand names. This way they make sure you will trust them.

More than that, scammers use fear to limit your ability to think clearly. While being frightened and in a vulnerable state, you are the perfect target and most likely to react the way they want you to.

Our experience with scam phone calls

One of our colleagues recently received a scam phone call. He played along, just to see where it will take him.

This isn’t the first time we’ve come across this type of incident. A few months ago, we witnessed a similar event – a fake tech support specialist called a Heimdal team member and tried to remotely access his computer.

So what happened?

Suddenly the phone rings, displaying a standard Danish number. Our colleague answers, and on the other side of the line, there is a lady with a strong Indian accent, who pretends to be from the “Computer Messages” department (they could have at least tried to come up with a more genuine name).

She warns him that his PC has been infected with malware, and reassures him this is the reason the computer is malfunctioning. Next, the tech support “specialist” tries to trick our colleague into pressing the Window + R keys and typing the “EVENTVWR” command.

When you press this key combination the Event Viewer window comes up on the screen. Almost anyone will have some warnings or errors showing up in here, and they may look scary to non-technical computer users.