- Jan 24, 2011
- 9,378
ogus support calls continue to plague Australians, with the Queensland Police Service (QPS) recently warning its constituents of a specific "outbreak" of call scams, this time from a call centre claiming to be the Windows Service Centre.
Brian Hay, a Detective Superindent with the QPS (and, not at all incidentally, winner of the 2010 AusCERT Director's Award for Individual Excellence in Information Security), points out that this latest scam seems to be more targeted than previous call-centre scams.
The scammers appear to have done some market research beforehand:
It has become apparent that some of the targeted victims of this scam had previously engaged in a phone survey some weeks earlier. This innocuous survey sought no personal information; however, it did query information regarding the householder’s computer equipment. When armed with this information at a later date, the fraudster is able to gain credibility of consumers to better scam them of their money.
More details - link
Brian Hay, a Detective Superindent with the QPS (and, not at all incidentally, winner of the 2010 AusCERT Director's Award for Individual Excellence in Information Security), points out that this latest scam seems to be more targeted than previous call-centre scams.
The scammers appear to have done some market research beforehand:
It has become apparent that some of the targeted victims of this scam had previously engaged in a phone survey some weeks earlier. This innocuous survey sought no personal information; however, it did query information regarding the householder’s computer equipment. When armed with this information at a later date, the fraudster is able to gain credibility of consumers to better scam them of their money.
More details - link
