Well back in the day we had emails telling us we won a fortune, then came Adware and Spyware, then came phishing with emails looking like they came from your bank or credit card company trying to trick you into giving them your login information, then we had SMS text messages trying to sell you something and making you pay for the cost of receiving the text, and Skype chats from people we didn’t know that wanted to sell us stuff we didn’t want.
This past week I experienced a new Scam.
The unsolicited Skype Phone Call from a”System Repair Alert” wanting to fix my windows computer that had, as the phone call told me, been infected with a virus.
Since I’m running on an Apple I wasn’t too concerned, but listened to the entire pitch so I could find out who was sending out this pre-recorded Skype call.
The Call referred me to the domain name HelpHS.com which was spelled out during the call at least 4 times.
A quick whois check of the domain, found that the domain was just registered 4 days earlier at EuroDns on April 24th.
Smart that the registrant chose a non-US based registrar, stupid if the registrant listed his correct name address and phone number.
However since the name on the whois record is that of a famous US actor John Malkovich, chances are the name is not correct.
Other have already reporting the Scam on the Skype board, and on the Complaints Board.
It seems that EuroDns already reacted to complaints and pulled the site down as it no longer is resolving.
Nice to see a problem fixed without the need for government seizure of domains.
Bottom line, we have a new method for those trying to screw us and its in the form of a Skype call.
Although it may have been he 1st, it’s surely not going to be the last time we will see this method being used so heads up.
Thank’s for sharing 🙂
Looks like Spammers never stop. They just keep finding new methods to scam peoples…….
interesting.
all the services mentioned (email, sms, skype) have one thing in common.
they all use a third party server. that is, your messages are not delivered directly. they pass through the email/sms/voice “service provider”.
could we achieve the same communication (email, sms, voice) without using a “service provider” for email/sms/voice? can users do the connection themselves? is it simple to do?
yes.
and the day may come when users do this… but users need to get smarter first… because “service providers” cater to the perceived knowledge level of the end user. they feel superior in their knowledge.
they (not to mention the scammers) assume that only a small minority of the population understand how the internet works. alas, they are mostly correct.
and then there is the “monkey see monkey do” nature of the internet. the power of “memes”. repeated concepts become ingrained. people believe skype is a “service” and so it is.
in the early days of telephone we used a switchboard. we let someone else connect us. why are we using one today for online communications?
washing your car is a “service”. there’s mechanised carwashes, there’s informal student or volunteer carwashes. but there’s also many who wash their own cars. hence a car wash is not some mystical thing. it doesn’t draw millions in investment.
connecting two computers over a network and sending bits (e.g. voice data) is not a mysical thing either.
connect directly and these scams just don’t work.
New types of scam is not surprising, and hopefully most Internet users are not that illiterate anymore. BTW great to see a domain registrar taking down a site at such quick notice
I just Had this exact problem! It must be back up again! I keep blocking it and doesn’t help for long. Its ridiculous. How do you shut it down?
I have been contacted by Skype telling me that I have a problem with my account and that I need to click onto a link to rectify the problem and that they will not be contacting me again about it.
The e mail ‘looked’ authentic………the only major problem is that I do not have a Skype account and nor do I intend to.
I just received one of these calls…it seems they are up and running again.
I’ve been getting these calls to “repair my computer” on skype every few days. Now the site is http://www.fixig.com, since I also have Mac I actually tried to go to check it out but after it started seemingly “scanning” my computer I bailed being afraid that someone may actually manage to install a malware on Mac one of these days as well. Anyways, they keep changing their site and continue calling. It’s impossible to block. Any advice on how to get rid of this?
Its almost June 2012, and I just got this message for the first time so its still doing the rounds 18 months on.
It is June 2012 now, and I’ve received 2 of these calls this week Is there anyway to stop them?
One of these creeps called my little sister. Why can’t they just get a normal job?
They are still going on. I have been receiving calls on SKYPE from ONLINE HELP for the past months but was home to answer this morning. I was told that my computer was not running effeciently and that my protection software was not active. The website to go to was given as: http://www.helpom.com. I checked with JUST ANSWER and they confirmed that it was a scam and referred me to this site where I now find out that his has been going on for a long time. The advice was never respond to an unsolicited call for computer assistance, especially from an organization the size of SKYPE.