Thousands of Australians have been taken for hundreds of dollars each by cold call scammers pretending to be Microsoft but police, regulators and the software company are powerless to fight the growing problem.
The scammers, typically based in Indian call centres, cold call people claiming to be Microsoft staff informing them that their computer has a virus on it. They provide bogus evidence of a virus infection and after winning over the victim, convince them to allow the scammer remote access to their computer through an internet website.
The scammers then pretend to fix the machine and ask for a fee that is up to $400. They use a combination of high pressure sales tactics and social engineering to scare the victim into paying the fee and because victims willingly hand over their credit card details, there is little legal recourse.
As is common with internet crimes, there was little police or local regulators could do to shut down the scams because the perpetrators are based overseas.
Anyone who has allowed remote access into their computer should immediately change all of their passwords, scan their computer for viruses and, ideally, get a professional company to scan the computer as well.
Microsoft had reached out to one of the sites the scammers use for remote access, logmein123, which had implemented IP address filtering and examined misuse of their test accounts to prevent scammers from using the service.
The International Consumer Protection and Enforcement Network (ICPEN), which coordinates responses to global scams such as this said that "both ICPEN and other national enforcement agencies are aware of the scam that you refer to".
However, it could not detail any specific measures taken to shut the scam down.
via SMH