TECH TALK: Will Microsoft call or email customers directly? No, it’s a SCAM!

Earlier this year, we heard about the scam from an overseas company calling homes in Canada and pretending to be representatives of Microsoft.  They told innocent consumers to urgently  go to their computers to do an update or a critical check as their computer was sending messages back to Microsoft of being hacked.  Waves of computer crashing soon followed and went this nasty scam went on for nine months and continues in some cases.

Even those in the “techy” business fell for the scam that targetted personal information, passwords and evening sensitive banking details.  CTV’s Lynda Steel did a consumer story on the topic.  Watch it here!

After months of making the rounds, the phone call scam was getting old as more people were catching on and the media picked up the story.  So that means, time to revise, rinse and repeat the next scam.   This one comes in the form of a very “real” looking email.  DO NOT CLICK ON ANY LINKS if you get an email that looks like the one below or any messages via your social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter.  Here is a screen shot of exactly what this email and link looks like:

How do you know it’s not real?

There are couple of instant giveaways but may only be obvious to the trained eye of a computer technician or programmer.  According to the owner of a local IT company, Matrix Connectivity Solutions, “Microsoft doesn’t call you at home or send you such emails.  That is the first rule to always remember.”

Likky Lavji’s company, Matrix, is a certified Microsoft vendor.  He also adds there are two things to look for – the email or link does not have microsoft.com – .com at the end.

The second thing is that the link ends in exe – which basically means it will run an application on your computer and that is bad news for computer owners. Lavji and his rapid response IT team have been monitoring client’s computers and servers and sending out warnings all day.

For more information on how to protect your workplace if you think you’ve been targetted, call us for solutions on how to protect your technology at work at  604-541-8957.

Kuljeet Kaila writes for Vancouver Desi. Follow her on Twitter at @kuljeetkaila

Tags: alert, computer, consumer alert, do not open, email, links, Microsoft scam, phone, urgent, viruses, warning