Came across this avast blog about unsolicited phone calls asking to take control of the computer. Now it is obvious that most of the people that own avast have not seen this blog.
Now to a hypothetical question. What happens if a person randomly calls people using the phone book hoping that somebody is using avast knowing the amount of people that have it installed. He then points out through social engineering that there is a problem with her computer saying he was a rep from the persons ISP or as the blog states from avast customer service. Then they ask the person to let them use the remote assistant feature and then take control of the computer planting malware including key loggers. Does this sound like something that is feasible? Now I don’t know how many people have upgraded to 7 but it seems to me after some time, a majority of people will have 7 and the ability to remote login by unscrupulous people using social engineering will be a concern. Maybe I am just crying wolf.
well, the number of Avast! users is still few compared to the internet population ::). In my opinion, quite a stupid way to scam ppl with that method (no offence) :).
secondly, ppl should educate themselves that ethical companies should never phone ppl and more importantly, ask for anything personal (in this case, access to ur computer) when there is no form of verification for the other party as the appropriate authority.
also, with Avast! remote control, the person who allows control of his computer to another person is able to terminate the control any time he feels something is suspicious.
lastly, the likelyhood that ppl falling to such scams is much much smaller than the number of ppl who will gain from legitimate help from their more technical friends, or even helpful forum members in here
Maybe robocalls, and got lucky. More likely, someone put too much personal information in their profile with their real name and location. A phone number lookup on the web, and there it is.
It could just as easily be another common AV or even MS, as this telephone scam has been done before.
As they say in the blog article, avast or its representatives don’t call you out of the blue, unless you had previously contacted them and asked them to ring you back, etc.
If the potential victim had previously called iYogi, the phone number and the fact that the target also used Avast would be readily known by any iYogi employee.
Thanks for the link to the krebsonsecurity article. I hadn’t seen it before. I hope that Avast doesn’t return to iYogi for support, although in the Steckler blog article said that they would work with iYogi to see if it could be relaunched.
iYogi reps probably were simply iYogi corporate policy. Otherwise, the problems wouldn’t have been so widespread and would have been nipped inhouse before Avast had to drop them.
I’ve gotten a few similar calls but none of them claimed to be coming from Avast, they’re all claiming to be calling from Microsoft, the remote control software they wanted me to use was ammyy, there’s a ton of these complaints on sites like whycall.me, but I don’t think your scenario is worth their trouble, Avast is one of the top AV out there but it’s much easier to just say they’re calling from microsoft, unless they have a list of Avast customers which would make their scam laser targeted.
More likely, someone put too much personal information in their profile with their real name and location.