Another day, another support scam call. It appears that one of my PCs has been sending out messages to India again about system problems. I don’t know why it would rather talk about its problems to a call centre in Uttar Pradesh rather than just pop up an error message to me. Does it feel I’m working it too hard? ;-) 
‘Anna’ claimed to be from Global PC Helpline, and gave me a UK phone number 0800-0148910 which does indeed correspond to the Global PC Helpline page for the UK at http://globalpchelpline.com/uk/. She also told me that my PC was sending out messages about system errors, and tried to pull the CLSID gambit on me, then put the phone down when she realized I wasn’t buying it and tried to get her to tell me what she thought the ASSOC program really does.
While this was clearly a scam call, I can’t, of course, prove beyond all doubt that she was calling from Global PC Helpline, and in fact Caller ID was disabled.
However, after taking a quick look at the GPCHL website, if they’ll excuse the familiarity, it includes some interesting features. While the company is claimed to have been founded in Magnolia TX in January 2009, whois data are not entirely consistent with that claim:
Anna also told me she was in India, when she was still answering my questions.
The site claims, among other services, to offer support for a number of well-known antivirus products. I particularly liked the first sentence of a section on support for McAfee products:
Our certified technicians provide you immediate help and best possible solutions for Norton Antivirus.
I’m not sure whether that means that McAfee and Symantec are closer friends than anyone realized. Or does it mean that McAfee detects and removes Norton? Perhaps the AV industry is more competitive than I’d realized.
The site has a number of more serious problems:
Any Texas Rangers reading this who can help this confused company sort out its real location?
David Harley CITP FBCS CISSP
ESET Senior Research Fellow
