Telephony Scams: Can You Help?

Back in 2009, I wrote about a telephony based scam that had gained momentum, and which sadly appears to have grown since then — invading other countries and scamming more victims. Since then, various other people, including my friends at Microsoft, have been investigating the companies involved, to try and both raise awareness and shut down those responsible.

In September of this year, myself, David Harley (Eset), Martijn Grooten (Virus Bulletin) and Craig Johnston (formerly Sophos), will be presenting a paper at VB2012 on this very subject, and one thing we’d like to do is try and gain a better idea of how widespread this problem is. We realize that until now a lot of people likely haven’t reported the incident due to embarrassment — but we’d like to know both how many of you have received these calls, and how many have fallen victim to them. While at InfoSec in London a few weeks ago, I met up with David and Martijn to go over some of the details, and one that we came up with was a survey, to help gain a better idea of the numbers involved — since we realise that the reports received by ourselves, and others, are likely a relatively small amount in comparison to those that have actually been called.

The results of the survey will be used not only to ensure a more accurate presentation, but also to help put a stop to this, and raise further awareness amongst the public to prevent others being scammed in the future.

Start survey

http://sgiz.mobi/s3/Scam-Customer-Service-Calls

References

Support Scammer Tricks

http://blog.eset.com/2011/11/30/support-scammer-tricks

PC Support Scam Resources

http://avien.net/blog/?page_id=790

Facebook Likes and cold-call scams

http://blog.eset.com/2011/11/09/facebook-likes-and-cold-call-scams

Microsoft Support Scam (again)

http://isc.sans.org/diary.html?storyid=10912

Info: Telephone scammers still coming to a phone near you!