Pointers on how to recognize PC support/coldcalling/ammyy.com/logmein.com scams before you hand over any cash.

Cold-call scammers now claim to be AV support staff, but misuse a widening range of system utilities to con victims into believing they have malware.

…the scammer doesn’t need you to edit the registry to find the CLSID he’s looking for. He simply has to persuade you to run the ASSOC command…

Here's a diagnostic window that your shouldn't panic over, certainly if some cold-calling scammer directs you to it by persuading you to run a diagnostic on your own system. But I'm getting ahead of myself. You might think I've blogged more than enough about support scams already – you know, where someone calls you out

A recent report from Get Safe Online suggested that one in four people in the UK have received calls like this (based on a sample of 1500 adults), and my colleagues in Ireland tell me that their experience suggests comparable figures there.

Urban Schrott, IT Security & Cybercrime Analyst, ESET Ireland, contributed an article to ESET's July ThreatSense report about support scams. Since this is an issue that is still being under-reported, we thought it was worth reproducing, with the urbane Mr. Schrott's permission, on the blog. While we're on that topic, there's a video worth watching