WARNING: That's NOT Microsoft Calling You!

Warning!!  There are hackers using a rather low-tech tech way to get into your computer systems.  Simply put, they try to trick you into letting them in.   The spouse of one of our clients had some first hand experience with just such an attack.   She received a very official-sounding phone call from someone purporting to be from Microsoft.   The "Microsoft" representative directed her to a website in order to download something and install it on her computer.

She started to comply but then became suspicious, stopped, and wisely ended the interaction.   She then called police.   The officer that responded advised that they are seeing a lot of this activity lately.  Here's a Microsoft article about this very type of attack from last month:

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/protect/forum/protect_scanning/they-keep-calling-me-too-how-do-i-stop-them/ac741fc8-4d49-e011-8dfc-68b599b31bf5

The moral of the story?  This lady was smart to be suspicious and we all need to be alert to this kind of scam.  The key point to remember is that Microsoft will NEVER contact you directly.  They won't call you at home OR e-mail you directly.  This is a common ruse that hackers will use to try to get you let them into your system or get credit card information.   Microsoft even posted a warning about this:

http://www.microsoft.com/security/online-privacy/msname.aspx

As antivirus and security defenses improve the hackers will rely on "social engineering" techniques such as these to try to trick people into infecting their own systems.  Just be aware... the nice gentleman on the phone offering you help quite likely isn't who he says he is.