Why America Hasn’t Won the War Against Scammer Tech Support Service Providers
Questions were asked last week when two fake tech support companies were shut down. The “crack and shut” operation raised eyebrows, particularly because the U.S handled the scammers rather flippantly compared to what the U.K would do.
On 29th January, the United States Federal Trade Commission listed six names of people in Ohio State who purportedly sneaked pop-up adverts on different sites. These adverts appeared to come from the user’s computer operating system—just like a ‘virus infection’ warning would— and instructed the user to make a toll-free call for help.
But that’s as good as free goes. The FTC asserted that; once you dialed in, they talked you into allowing their “experts” (who claimed to be legally approved) remote access to your system. If you fell for their stories, the technician would secretly run msconfig, and later claim that your system breakdown resulted from of a malware.
All victims who bought the “malware” lie were instructed to either pay for a one-time fix or sign a long-term contract with fees as high as $500, sources claim. If you turned them down, their “technician” would lock down your system using the syskey app to further convince you that your computer is infected, said the FTC.
FTC filed charges in 2017 after investigating the six, and a group of small tech support businesses linked to the scam. However, contrary to the expectations of many, the case was last week settled outside court. As a consequence; the companies agreed to give up the tech support business and pay a total fine of $24.8m to the FTC.
The defendants case were companies like Datadeck LLC; Pro PC Repair LLC; Repair All PC LLC; I Fix PC LLC; Online Assist LLC; and I Fix PC dbaTechers247; WebTech World LLC.
Individual defendants included: Jessica … Read More