In addition, the customer support technician also asked for payment information. “As soon as they called the number on screen, the helpdesk installed some sort of TeamViewer (remote access program) and took control of the victim’s computer,” Pitman told Sky News. To fix the issue, the alert tells the user to call a customer support number. The scam works by triggering a virus alert once the USB stick is plugged into the victim’s PC. Cybersecurity consultant Martin Pitman recovered the USB stick and packaging through his mother, who ended up calling him when she was at another person’s home trying to install it.

I feel incredibly stupid (and am stupid) and have learned my lesson the hard way.The scheme is pretty elaborate, and it could end up tricking unsuspecting consumers hoping to get free access to Microsoft Office Professional, which can normally retail for $439. Nothing seems to be infected, but I'm afraid that the scammer can still see my computer because he used a different site than the official Teamviewer site. They ran a couple of virus scanners for me, and I'm now running my installed Avast and new Malwarebytes. I refused, then called Dell and informed them of the scammer. He did not download anything, but was trying to get me to buy a warranty so he could fix the issue I've been having. He directed me to the Teamviewer site through an ip-address looking site address (I still have it but do not want to post it on here.) I allowed him to run 'Join Remote Control Session' on the Teamviewer site as it was similar to the site that Alienware uses.

As the scammer knew my problem and was asking me the status of my computer, saying he was from the company. Apparently scammers hacked into the Alienware servers and got my phone number, and called me. Hi guys, recently I've been trying to get ahold of Alienware tech support to fix a problem I've been having with my computer.

Teamviewer microsoft scam