Almost exactly a year ago I posted on this site, and on the Cardiff u3a Digital Matters webpage, an account of one of our member’s encounter with the Windows Defender pop-up scam.
It was indeed pleasing to be able to report that the member resolved the problem and it didn’t re-occur – as far as I know – but pop-up scams are a concern and this short post just gives some illustration of what the issue is, plus some advice on how to resolve the problem if you find your machine has been “taken over”.
I like this US video from the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) which explains the issue really well …
… and their are many more videos on scams, identity theft and the like on their website.
Perhaps the most common scam is the Tech Support Scam – which is what the Windows Defender one mentioned above was. The objective of the scammer is to get complete control of your computer by persuading the user they have a problem which can be resolved by you letting them “repair” the problem remotely – so please let them have your userid and password. Quite the opposite of course – the result will be either you’re locked out of your computer whilst the scammer harvests your personal details (bank accounts, etc), or they are going to implant malware so that they can record what you’re doing online, or use your computer as a relay (an intermediary) for other attacks on other services. Not a happy place to be then!
So read this article carefully. It describes in far greater depth and detail what these scams are and how you can remove pop-ups.
A more extensive article which explains how to reduce and remove malware from a Windows PC is provided here.