Gadgetory

thanks for watching tech wiki click the subscribe button and enable notifications with the bell icon so you won't miss any future videos so picture this it's a lazy Friday night at home because for the 24th week in a row you don't have a date and you're enjoying another fine episode of tech quickie while idly browsing the web in a separate window and then suddenly you get an alarming looking set of error messages and pop-ups telling you that your PC machine of thought was cleaner than a Singapore sidewalk is hopelessly infected with dozens of viruses and you need to call Microsoft at this convenient number right now to fix it whoa whoa whoa stop right there there's nothing wrong with your computer it's a tech support scam and not the one where you pay a hundred bucks for someone to come over to plug in the SSD you bought from Amazon that may be overpriced but at least it's legitimate tech support scams usually start from inside a browser window or they can come in the form of a phone call now over the phone basically someone cold calls you saying that they're with a major corporation like Microsoft in the windows support department or something to that effect and that they have somehow detected serious issues with your PC may be through a non-existent ISP report then there's browser based scams these have been rapidly increasing in popularity especially on unlicensed streaming sites for movies and sporting events the way these ones work is that many of them tried to visually emulate real error messages like the windows blue screen of death and they will often throw in a bunch of logos from companies like Google and Apple to make them look more legit but while either of these forms of attack can be disposed of simply by hanging up the phone or closing your browser they may try to convince you that doing this you know waiting until the morning to get a second opinion from Geek Squad or powering off your system could result in irreparable damage and that you have to instead allow one of their technicians to fix the issue for you in either case once one of these shady characters feels like they've got your attention they'll usually have you bring up windows features that are novice computer user might be unfamiliar with for example having them type something simple into command prompt and then using whatever comes up as evidence of a malware infection or telling them to open Event Viewer which keeps a log of every system message that pops up now the thing is that even a PC that's functioning normally will often have a good number of errors in the Event Viewer things as small as a game crash for a slight issue with your network connection but the scammer will tell the victim that these error records are super dangerous and they will totally wreck their data then they'll present their solution downloading remote access software so that they can take control of your system to fix the problem at some point during this process the scammer will also demand payment often by credit card either to renew a software license or fix these fake problems the ones who are mostly just interested in stealing your credit card details might just kind of putz around for a minute or two and clear the Event Viewer log to make it appear that they did something but the more nefarious ones can also use their remote access to install actual malware or steal your personal files there have even been cases of scammers deleting the data and system files if the victim refuses to pay and even though a common stereotype is that it's older folks that fall for these scams more frequently the truth is that younger people in their 20s and 30s have also been hit hard by this sort of cybercrime due to spending more time online so to avoid becoming a victim keep this in mind companies like Microsoft Apple and Google will never cold call you or email you out of the blue to tell you that there's a problem with your PC or your iPhone or whatever and if you get a scam error message while you're using a browser remember that real errors will almost never contain any useful information and they will certainly never prompt you to call a specific and while we're at it real blue screens of death take up the entire screen not just your browser window another way to tell if you're being scammed is to go back in time to third grade and pay close attention to spelling class many of these fake warnings are littered with spelling and grammatical errors as well as super bombastic use of all caps and many exclamation points not exactly the type of thing you'd expect to see from a serious multi-billion dollar software company if you want to see some real-world examples of what to watch out for we've actually linked to page from Microsoft down in the video description which has lots of useful hints and even screenshots of these sorts of scam pages so if you see one the best thing to do is just close your browser unless you want to be like Linus media group alumnus Nick van Berkel and you enjoy spending your spare time trolling these people for a bit speaking of instant this segue into our sponsor thanks to audible for sponsoring today's episode you can get your first audiobook and choose two titles from a list of audible originals for free when you try audible for 30 days just go to audible.com slash tech quickie or text tech quickie - 500 500 I love that so much text tech quickie - 500 500 audible originals our exclusive audio titles created by celebrated storytellers from worlds as diverse as theater journalism literature and more one sure winner is on power by Pulitzer Prize winner Robert a Caro in which he discusses the inner workings of political power you can listen to it while you're on the way to work while you're pretending to pay attention to your kids dance class or really anywhere so check out audible we're gonna have that link below it's audible.com slash tech wiki go get a 30-day trial right now so thanks for watching guys if you 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