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someone has taken your sales informaton
Dear Dell,
A man called our house two days ago saying he was from microsoft and stated we had a virious in our dell laptop which he gave the serial number for.
He then had me check some files whichshowed warnings and said my computer would stop workinf in 200 minutes, he then attempted to sell me a windows seven ulta package for over $300, when I refuse he said it will die and never work again. I know this seems like a micosoft problem but he had the information off our Dell lap top and only wanted us to look at files on the Dell not our HP. He went by the name of Edward Thomas. I think youo have someone in your organization who has bought a bunk of old software and are calling your customer atempting to sell it to them through fear. I beleive it is the Dell organization because they had all the info on our Dell laptop and no other computer we own. I hope you can find these men and remove them they are not helping Dell.
joeinsag
DELL-Amy B
2 Intern
2 Intern
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370 Posts
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November 30th, 2012 15:00
Dear Joeinsag,
We understand your concerns and appreciate you bringing this to our attention. We can confirm that this is not a call originating from Dell.
We are aware that unauthorized callers are using the Dell company name and those of our business partners to potentially coerce you into making fraudulent payments in return for unsolicited support. This is recognized as an on-going industry wide issue with unsolicited technical support calls come from individuals using a variety of company names (Microsoft being one of the most commonly used).
For further information from Microsoft regarding these types of issues please go to: www.microsoft.com/.../msname.aspx
These fraudulent organizations are known to harvest your details through a variety of methods such as fake virus scanning & illicit screen scraping tools combined with publicly available information held about you.
Here at Dell we are closely monitoring these scams and want to assure you that we constantly monitor our Dell.com online web pages for security.
For further information and somewhere you can report a fraud of this nature please go to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) site: www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov
and/or www.ftc.gov/.../report.shtml
Let me know if we can be of any further assistance here.
Thanks,
Amy
joe53
2 Intern
2 Intern
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5.8K Posts
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November 27th, 2012 03:00
Hi Joeinsag, and welcome to DCF:
Unsolicited "Cold calls" over the phone from folks claiming to be from Microsoft, or from a vendor such as Dell, claiming that your PC is infected, are invariably from scam artists or cyber-criminals, not from legit sources. You did right in not purchasing anything from this source.
"In order to trick victims into believing that their computers have a problem, scammers commonly leverage the Windows Event Viewer, a legitimate Microsoft application that lists various errors and warnings logged on the system. Most of them are not of critical importance, but can appear worrisome to non-technical users."
- Source: http://www.pcworld.com/article/251914/coldcalling_scammers_target_antivirus_customers_diversify_their_tactics.html
Under no circumstances should you grant these folks "Remote Access" to your computer:
- http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/info_sht/g9.htm
ky331
3 Apprentice
3 Apprentice
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15.3K Posts
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November 27th, 2012 04:00
Joeinsag,
I will bring this post to the attention of some Dell liaisons [Connie & Amy], who hopefully will contact you here for additional details.
As Joe said, it's obviously a scam. You did the right thing in not accepting their "ransom demand". And you're also right to be troubled if they had specific information such as your machine's serial number.
iroc9555
1K Posts
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November 27th, 2012 13:00
Hi Joeinsang.
I must ask again what Joe53 stated above " Under no circumstances should you grant these folks "Remote Access" to your computer "
If you did not, no harm done; however, if you did, it would be a good idea to have your computer check by an expert. You can have this done here for free:
http://spywarehammer.com/simplemachinesforum/index.php?board=10.0