Microsoft phone scam - this happened at an office and someone else
responded they received a similar call at home ----- The call was from a
woman who said that she was from Microsoft and that my computer has a
virus that was affecting the Microsoft global satellite. She said that
she was able to identify my computer through
a particular ID number. She gave me the ID number and asked me to bring
up a command box on my computer. When I did, the code was there. She
then said that that was proof that what she was telling me was true and
wanted to tell me what to do next to fix the problem. I stopped her
there and said no, that I needed a call back number and her name to
verify that she was really from Microsoft. She got angry but gave both
to me, and I hung up.
I found out that, had I allowed her to
continue, she would have asked for permission to remotely control my
computer and would have been able to take personal information from my
files. She also would have tried to sell me a software package to clean
up the program. The ID number is apparently the same for any Microsoft
software package. I wasn’t fooled but she was very convincing, so I
wanted to pass this along in case you receive a similar call.