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Latest trending topics being covered on ZDNet including Reviews, Tech Industry, Security, Hardware, Apple, and Windows. InformationWeek. com News, analysis and research for business technology professionals, plus peertopeer knowledge sharing. Engage with our community. Norton Internet Security is an advanced security software for your PC. Learn more about Norton Internet Security now. You may unsubscribe from these newsletters at any time. PC Support Security Scams ZFSENDTOTARGET CLSID Trick. Had another call today from a firm telling me that my computer was generating errors caused by malware, which was caused because my security warranty was out of date. I had a similar call the other day, and knowing it to be a scam I got rid of them pretty quickly. Buy Norton Security Deluxe 3. User, 5 Devices and protect your PCMac device against viruses, spyware, malware and other Internet threats. Order Notron. Norton AntiVirus is an antimalware software developed and distributed by Symantec Corporation since 1991 as part of its Norton family of computer security products. Today I decided to find out what exactly they are doing, so I played dumb, sounded very concerned at all times, and went along with the whole process while taking notes, just so I could raise awareness here. Are You A Victim Contact Action Fraud. In the UK you can report problems to http www. Many Companies Doing This Scam. I have had another call today from a company doing the same scam, i. This time I said that it was OK and that my computer was working fine, thanks. They asked if I have an antivirus, and I said that I did. They then said that the antivirus was not able to detect this type of error. Adobe Bridge Convert Raw To Jpeg Batch Converter. The new company is called 3. E Tech Support. I asked for their website details and they reluctantly gave them to me, and then said ok. Lovely people. So the companies I have dealt with so far have called themselves 3. E Tech Support www. PC Support Care Today www. Windows PC care The company mentioned in The Guardians news item. Microsoft Tech Support. Windows Security. Windows Service Centerteche. Puresomp. org. Computer Systems Worldwide. Windows care. Windows Technical Support. They sometimes call from 0. Important Note some of these names may be perfectly legal and trustworthy companies. One new trend that we are seeing is that the scammers use a known company name first and then direct you to a different website in the final stage. In July 2. 01. 0 Londons Met Police closed down 1. More are popping up though. Microsoft have addressed this as well and stated clearly that Microsoft does not make unsolicited phone calls to help you fix your computer on Microsofts website. Hopefully you are reading this because you had a similar call and were concerned and Googled it. This is why I am posting as much as possible. If another company has called you with the same tactics leave a comment below and I will list them too. Trusted Anti Virus Software. I trust these services. I also receive commission from any sales. There are also some good free solutions that are listed further down the page. The First Scam Call I Received. It started when a nice lady from the Indian subcontinent called me. This is more or less how the conversation went I wrote most of it down as I knew it would make a good blog post for Webologist. These people are basically trying to do one of two things, I am not sure what, probably actually both Just get you to buy a product to protect your computer, but really they just want your credit card details. Install illegal software to take control of your computer, install spyware, malware and hijack your emails, and send viruses out to other people. In short, these people are probably scoundrels that try to con people into handing over their bankcredit card details and then infecting their computers with viruses. They tell you that they are calling from a PC Support company, explain that they have Microsoft Certified Engineers they surely do, as running such a scam is hard without some good Microsoft know how but anyone can become a Microsfoft certified engineer, not just Microsoft employees. They started asking me what operating system I was using. I pretended not to know, so they told me where to go to find out. ALERT If they really had received reports that there were errors on my computer, they would know the operating system already. After finding out what OS I am using asking me to left click start and then asking if I had My Computer or Computer listed i. XP of Vista they then went on to tell me more about the problem. I put in quotes what they said from now on although it may not be entirely accurate Your system is corrupt because your warranty has run out. As a result malware is getting on to your computer from unsecured websites. This is slowing down your computer and will eventually cause the operating system to fail. She went on to ask if my computer was slow to respond ever. As Windows computers age they do tend to get slower. The world gets faster, the harddrive gets filled, they slow down relatively and physically. This is normal. She also asked if I was the only computer user or if others used it I guess trying to determine which product I should order so that they can control all users. The Computer Error Scam. She then directed me to Computer Manage Computer Management System Tools Event View Windows Logs. It showed a list of events, with errors and warnings. She asked me how many errors there were. I said about 2. 0. This is not really important. She told me that these errors were serious and caused by the malware. On looking, one error was when I typed my password in wrong. Another was a video driver that does not work in Vista ATI thing that always gives an error when I boot up. Nothing serious there at all. There are malware files on your computer. These are creating the errors I mentioned earlier that are being reported to us. You need to remove these malware files. You cannot just delete them, you have to disable the link to the file. She told me that users have been accessing unsecured websites. She next led me to the temporary folder on my pc by doing Windows Buttom R to open a Run command box then typing temp malware which just opens a Windows temp directory. Inside mine there was just about 6 items, adding up to 9. A tiny amount. This did not deter her, she told me that if this continues my pc will fill up and die. She did not ask me what was in there there was Google Chrome, Avast antivirus and a few other things. She then did a silly calculation based on the total size and size and told me that the drive was already 9. I said it is less than 1 megabyte, that is not much. She persisted obviously reading a script. We have to now share the operating system ID so that we are sure that we are speaking to the right person and the right computer. Here comes their most cunning trick to make you think that they are genuine Windows support. CMD ASSOC ZFSENDTOTARGET CLSIDThey ask you to open a command prompt, Windows R again, then type CMD, then in the command prompt type ASSOC. This lists a load of programs and stuff, and at the bottom there will be something that looks like this They will then read out to you the CLSID, which will match, and this is the verification that they have the right person. THEY TRY TO MAKE YOU THINK THAT THEY HAVE TO VERIFY YOU Classic scammers trick, really it is you that should be verifying them. This number is not unique. It will be on most computers, maybe unique to Vista, but they have already confirmed that you are running Vista. So if they spell out 8. DCA6. 0 FC0. A 1. CF 8. F0. F 0. 0C0. FD7. D0. 62 to you, do not be surprised, as lots of people, if not all Vista users, have a CLSID of 8. DCA6. 0 FC0. A 1. CF 8. F0. F 0. 0C0. FD7. D0. 62. So another lie Another SCAMDoes it match Great, we can carry on safely now. We have Microsoft Certified Technicians that have confirmed that your warranty has expired which his why you are getting these errors. There are two types of warranty, a hardware warranty and a software warranty.