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Law enforcement officials issued a warning of a new scam involving hackers who attempt to dupe people on the Internet who are browsing the web.
According to police, those who have been victimized unexpectedly got a “virus alert” on their desktop designed to look as if it came from Microsoft that took over the entire browser page.
The victim then called “Microsoft” at the 800-641-7676 number provided on the browser window, at which point the scammer said that the user probably had a virus and would require a $500 payment to have it removed from the computer.
Officials said that the “Microsoft Tech” then went in and found the suspicious files and removed them.
When the victim called her computer’s anti-virus tech support team, she was told by an agent that the number she called was not a Microsoft number, was instead a scam number and the computer had likely been hacked.
No other reports of the “virus scam” have been flagged by law enforcement in the region.
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