The fraud known as the “tech support scam” provides people with a fake tech support service that aims to “fix” non-existent problems. Using various social engineering strategies, these criminals manage to trick large numbers of people into giving their money or sensitive data, such as passwords and financial details, that there is a problem with a system.

In the United States, nearly 24,000 people reported losing nearly $348 million in tech support scams in 2021, which amounts to an increase in losses of 137% over the previous yearsays the FBI. However, this would not reflect the magnitude of the problem, as many victims are hesitant to file the associated complaint. Meanwhile, separate research from Microsoft in 2021 shows that three-fifths of consumers worldwide have encountered this type of scam in the past 12 months and that “one in six fell for it”, often losing money to it.

“The silver lining of it all is that this is a cybercrime that can be prevented with a good dose of user awareness. By detecting the early warning signs, people can avoid falling victim to this plan, saving a lot of time, money and possibly tears,” said Camilo Gutiérrez Amaya, Head of the ESET Latin America Research Laboratory.

Tech support scams have evolved significantly over the past decade. The first cases involved cold calls from bogus technical support agents, mostly based in India, claiming to work for Microsoft, Dell, Cisco, or any other technology company, including well-known security vendors. In this way, scammers called people out of the blue and more or less randomly tried to convince them that their computer had a problem that needed to be fixed immediately and for a fee. The success of these attempts was largely based on finding victims with little knowledge of how computers actually work, and they were supported by websites and Facebook pages that offered “help” to users of specific products.

Over time, deceptive ads, fake pop-ups, fake support websites, and malware-like program attacks began to emerge. In this way, warnings were displayed on people’s computer screens to convince them that something was wrong with their machine. Scams became more sophisticated and took a different turn: they began tricking the victim into calling the scammer (often after visiting a shady website), rather than scammers calling people in a largely random manner.

Some of the new tactics they are using, which are now being highlighted by the FBI as well, include the following steps:

“Of course, this is not the only variant of the tech support scam out there. Another post shared by the FBI states that scammers can call, text or email to make initial contact with the victim. They can pose as representatives of not only technology companies, but also financial and banking institutions, utilities, or even virtual currency exchanges. The “problem” that needs to be fixed for which they are supposedly calling may not be a license or warranty extension, but a compromised email or bank account, or even a computer virus,” added Gutierrez Amaya of ESET Latin America.

Fraudsters can then:

Other tactics may include:

From ESET, they share some tips to detect and stop technical support scams:

· Do not respond directly to or call numbers in unsolicited emails. When in doubt, manually look up the number of the company involved and call them immediately for verification.

· If a pop-up window or error message appears on your computer screen containing a phone number, resist the temptation to call the number.

· If someone calls to say the computer has a problem, hang up.

· Do not give remote PC access to anyone you do not know personally, including representatives on the phone.

· Do not share passwords with anyone.

· Do not log into any banking or financial accounts while granting remote access to your computer.

· Keep in mind that scammers will always try to rush the decision making process, often causing the victim to panic. It is important to resist the urge to do this, take a deep breath and think.

· If you are concerned about fraudulent activity, closely monitor bank account transactions.

· Use security software from a trusted vendor on all your devices.