Here’s a brazen fake antivirus program that falsely declares you are infected, then locks your screen and asks you call a toll free number for Support, which then asks you to pay to remove the fake infection.

…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…

…And therein lies a problem that goes beyond support scams. The telephone network, like the Internet, isn’t very good at recognizing national boundaries. Which is why I have a couple of rules of thumb when it comes to cold callers…

got a phone call from a gentleman with a pronounced accent wanting to help me with my virus problem … You didn’t know I had a virus problem? Neither did I, but he assured me that I was spraying malware all over the part of town I live and work in.

UK journalist Kevin Townsend has blogged today on what sounds like two support scam phone-calls of a type I’ve mentioned here a few times since a colleague at another company drew my attention to it last month.