Four people in UK arrested over technical support scams

4 people in England have been arrested for their involvement in the notorious “technical support scam” that tricks victims into installing malware onto their own computers.

Technical support scams work by cold calling victims and tricking them into believing they are talking to a technical support assistant when in reality they are talking to a scammer.

The scammer, who often claims to be working on behalf of Microsoft, tells the victim that there is a problem with their computer and they need to follow instructions to sort it out.

However those instructions will sneakily allow crooks to install malware onto the victim’s computer, and then usually demand a fee to remove it.

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These scams often derive from countries such as India or Russia. However in this case 4 people from the UK have been arrested for their involvement. It follows a two year investigation by both Microsoft and the City of London Police.

Readers are advised to never trust any unexpected calls where the caller claims to be working for Microsoft or a “technical agent” asking you to switch on your computer.

”We’d also like to reassure all users of Microsoft software that we will never cold call you out of the blue or use tech support pop ups on websites” say Microsoft.

For our full article on these types of scams, click here.