Avast_Blog_Threat_Research: Investigating tech support fraud

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How to spot tech support fraud pages, realize you’re being targeted, and know what to do in these situations

This post was written by Alexej Savcin and Michal Stanek.

When Jamil Qandah got a call from Avast tech support, he had no reason to think that it wasn’t really us calling. It wasn’t until the “tech support” stole his life savings of over $200,000 that he realized he’d become a victim of an increasingly popular form of online scam: technical support fraud. 

Tech support fraud is a big business for criminals. You may not realize it, but these schemes are actually run like businesses, with sophisticated call centers and proven scripts that they use. 

The losses from tech support fraud are huge. According to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3)’s 2020 Internet Crime Report, the FBI received 15,421 tech support fraud complaints from victims in 60 countries in 2020. The victims lost over $146 million, a 171% increase in losses from 2019.
 
Tech support fraud is a crime that disproportionately affects older people. According to the IC3 report, the majority of tech support fraud victims (66%) are over 60 years of age and experienced 84% of the total losses (over $116 million).  In order to help combat this issue, let’s take a look at some of the tricks that tech support fraudsters use to deceive people and steal their money. 

What is tech support fraud?

Tech support fraud is an industry-wide issue where fraudsters use scare tactics to trick you into buying overpriced, unnecessary technical support services that supposedly fix problems with your computer, device, or software.

At best, the fraudsters are trying to get you to pay them to "fix" a nonexistent problem. At worst, they're trying to steal your personal or financial information.

And if you allow them to remotely connect to your computer to perform this "fix," they will often install malware, remote desktop software, or other unwanted programs that can steal your information or damage your data or device. 

As part of their work to “fix” these “problems,” they may ask you to open some files or run a scan on your computer and then tell you those files or the scan results show a problem. They will then try to convince you to pay for tech support services you don't need, to fix a problem that doesn’t exist. As part of the fraud, they often ask you to pay by wiring money, putting money on a gift card, prepaid card or cash reload card, or using a money transfer app because they know those types of payments can be hard to reverse. That means it’s harder for you to get your money back if you realize it’s a fraud.

Tech support fraud typically starts one of two ways: Either you receive a call on the phone from someone who claims to be with tech support saying they’re calling to help you or you end up on a web page that tech support fraudsters have set up. Let’s take a look at the tech support fraud websites.

To convince you that your computer has some kind of problem, fraudsters create web pages that imitate the look of well-known antivirus or firewall software that display fake messages with warnings and alerts. Once you’re on their malicious site, they try to block your browser to prevent you from leaving the website or closing the whole browser. 

The graph below shows the number of tech support fraud attack attempts blocked in the U.S. by Avast from June 2020 through May 2021.
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