An Early Christmas Present?

Last week I received a telephone call in the office from a man with a very strong Indian accent; he told me that his name was Peter and he was calling from the windows technical team. They had become aware that my computer had a very nasty virus.  He went on to say that there were some very nasty people around and to show that he was genuine he was able to give me the windows licence key.   Peter would be able to fix my computer remotely if I entered a web-site and gave him access to my machine.  The service would be completely free of charge.

I asked him how he knew that my computer was infected but he stuck to his script telling me that his name was Peter…. etc.

Before I put the phone down I mentioned that this company was involved in Management Standards and in particular ISO 27001 Information Security and we wouldn’t give anyone access to our systems let alone someone pretending to be from the windows technical team.  Once the call was terminated I tried 1471 to see what the number was, but it was ‘number withheld’, surprise!!.

There are quite a few scams going around at this time of year but targeting companies is something of a departure from the norm.   Don’t be fooled into giving unauthorised access to your systems under any circumstances.

We are off to a well-deserved rest for Christmas and we hope that our clients and readers of our blog have a very merry Christmas and a prosperous and Happy New Year.