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

Myself and others have been reporting on and following, the telephony based scams which for now, are being traced back to "companies" in Kolkata, India, for quite some time now.

I'm sorry to say (but definitely not surprised), these scammers are still targeting people around the world, with reports coming in quite frequently to places such as digitaltoast.co.uk (warning, due to the page size, it may freeze your browser whilst it loads), with the last one as little as two hours ago, from someone in Canada.

Sadly, not many seem to be mentioning the sites they were pointed to, but the latest one that was mentioned, was techesupport.co.cc, hosted by USA based, HostNOC at IP 184.82.73.38. Surprised to see .co.cc being used? Nope, neither am I. Along with dot.tk, cz.cc etc, .co.cc is a favourite amongst the criminal crowd as it's free.

The primary concern to try and put a stop to this, other than actually arresting the criminals (wondering why the LE in India haven't put a stop to it themselves??), is to try and warn as many people as possible - your family, friends, friends of friends, work colleagues ... you get the picture. On this note, my good friend over at Eset, David Harley has written a paper (and thank you for the mention David!) you can print out and give them, that contains alot of information on these scams, and of course, what to look out for so you can avoid them.

Where’s your IT support desk when you need it?
http://blog.eset.com/2011/03/03/wheres-your-it-support-desk-when-you-need-it

The paper itself can be found at the following, listed under "Eset white papers";

http://www.eset.com/us/documentation/white-papers

Title: Hanging on the Telephone
Authors: David Harley, Urban Schrott and Jan Zeleznak, February 2011
Short description: As if fake anti-virus products weren’t bad enough, nowadays we have unsolicited phone-calls from fake AV helpdesks. ESET researchers tell you more about support scams.

Download the paper, give it a good read, and make sure you pass a copy on to friends, relatives, colleagues, and anyone else you can think of. Have a word with your local media and see if they'll publicize it too.

References

Support Scams: Even More Personal
http://blog.eset.com/2010/12/16/support-scams-even-more-personal

Fake Support: the War Drags On
http://blog.eset.com/2010/11/18/fake-support-the-war-drags-on

Marketing Misusing ESET’s Name
http://blog.eset.com/2010/06/23/marketing-misusing-esets-name

techonsupport.com, click4rescue.com, pcrescueworld.com: SupportOnClick revisited
http://hphosts.blogspot.com/2009/12/techonsupportcom-click4rescuecom.html

SupportOnClick: Phoned by Malwarebytes? BigPond? Anyone else?

http://hphosts.blogspot.com/2009/07/supportonclick-phoned-by-malwarebytes.html

SupportOnClick Update
http://hphosts.blogspot.com/2009/04/supportonclick-update.html

supportonclick.com scamming you by telephone!
http://hphosts.blogspot.com/2009/03/supportonclickcom-scamming-you-by.html

Fake tech support call scam - prefetch virus logmein123.com
http://www.digitaltoast.co.uk/fake-tech-support-call-scam-prefetch-virus-logmein123com

New scam - They call you by phone!
http://www.malwarebytes.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=11156

Staffordshire Council - Telephone computer support warning (PDF)
http://www.staffordshire.gov.uk/NR/rdonlyres/6997DBB0-E31E-4AFB-A886-C9DDEE114204/90090/TelephoneComputerSupportWarning.pdf

Cold call scam warns of virus infection
http://www.h-online.com/security/Cold-call-scam-warns-of-virus-infection--/news/112893

Scareware scammers adopt cold call tactics
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/04/10/supportonclick_scareware_scam