An event that was reported two years back where tech support scammers knew sensitive information such as the model number, serial number of a user’s computer especially Dell computers. Despite this occuring two years ago users are still getting calls from these tech support scammers using the same acquired information.
While Most Tech support scams are opportunistic where a caller falsely claims that they are from Microsoft coming up with lines like “your Windows operating system needs an upgrade” even when a person owns a Mac OS based system.
The main aim of the call is to trick the person into purchasing software or fix a technical issue so that they can charge money in other cases there are cases that these tech support scammers install software that will provide remote access to the computer these kinds of call generally target Windows computers from several years.
The scam calls from Dell are more specific as the scammers were able to mention the name of the customer, their model number and a serial number of the user’s laptop armed with those details the customer may be more inclined to believe the calls legitimacy.
It was first reported by Drew Levitt who bought a Dell laptop on March 2016 he reported that he has been receiving such calls for the last four months.
“I just got a call from ‘Dell’ who knew EVERYTHING about my computer, and my full name,” one forum participant wrote in February. “This is much worse than a typical scammer, and the fact that Dell will not address it fully means that I will definitely NOT be buying a Dell again until they get their $hit together and admit to what happened and what they’ve done to prevent it.”
Dell representatives said that the scammers are using some old service history to find the details of the customers, they are currently working on the issue to shut down these scammers.