Increasingly businesses and home users throughout the UK are being targeted in sophisticated IT scams. Using similar software to legitimate IT support companies and the aggressive ‘boiler house’ methods of more common financial fraud businesses and individuals are being targetted.

Over the last 6 months we have been contacted by a number of individuals and businesses telling a similar story: They receive a cold call from a company claiming to either be Microsoft or a Microsoft Partner company telling them that they have a detected a virus on their computer. They then offer (or in some cases insist) to remotely access it and ‘fix’ the problem.

Fortunately nobody we’ve spoken to has fallen for this scam but they are the lucky ones. Nationally this is a growing problem with some people being pushed into handing over credit card details to fix non-existent problems.

Well respected PC magazine recently publish an article on just this problem and it doesn’t seem to be getting any better.

So, to try and protect yourself and your computer from this type of fraud here are some top tips:-

1. Protection – always install anti-virus protection and keep it up to date. A good free option for non-commercial use is Microsoft Security essentials (available from the Microsoft Website)
2. Updates – always make sure your computer is uptodate with security patches from the manufacturer – this applies equally to Windows, Apple and Linux machines.
3. Common Sense – it its very unlikely Microsoft would ring you – unless you have Bill Gates on speed dial be very sceptical of anyone ringing you out of the blue.
4. Good Practice – only allow somebody to access you PC who you know and trust.

As always if you have any concerns about the health of your PC then speak to us: you can email or call (0845 481 10 10) We offer a range of comprehensive testing for PC’s and networks and our ATL Alert service can protection and watch over your systems as you sleep 24/7.