Rise of the PC support call scam

Thanks to Simon Hooper for letting us know about a very convincing support-desk scam that is hitting British computer users. Full details of the scam are described in an article on the PC Pro website but it seems that a team of fraudsters, calling themselves “The Nerd Support”, are cold-calling users and telling them that Microsoft has detected a virus on their PC. They then persuade their victim to download remote-assistance software so they can confirm the presence of the virus before reassuring them they can get rid of it – for a fee of £185. The website victims are directed to for downloading the software is very convincing, carrying official-looking logos such as “Microsoft Registered Partner” and reassuring visitors that it has been verified by McAfee Site Advisor as a site that’s passed its “intensive daily security scan” that tests for “dangerous sites, phishing, and other online dangers”. And, to complete the picture of respectability, they even have a legitimate London phone number, although these can be bought from internet phone companies for as little as £4 per month, meaning you don’t even need to be in the UK, let alone London, to be contactable on an 0203 number. Indeed, from PC Pro’s own investigations they believe the fraudsters are operating from offices “closer to Bombay than Brixton”. Unfortunately, despite a growing number of victims, none of the UK consumer protection agencies or even Microsoft have been able to close the scam down so it looks like this one could be around for some time.

BT to raise call charges by 10%

According to an article on the BBC website today, BT are planning to increase call charges by 10% and its monthly line rental by 50p from the beginning of October. The cost of connecting a call will go up by a penny from 9.9p to 10.9p and the daytime rate by half a penny from 5.9p to 6.4p a minute.

As you might expect, however there are a of raft ways in which BT customers can avoid or minimise these increases, for example by signing up to longer-term contracts, moving to bundled inclusive packages, paying annually rather than quarterly or monthly, or opting to receive their bills electronically. Which is all well and good if you’ve got the time and knowledge to obectively review your bills and work out which are the best options for your organisation, including whether to move to an alternative supplier.  Auditel clients who use BT will, of course, be contacted by their consultants as a matter of course to discuss recommendations for ensuring these price rises don’t impact on them.

EU cap data roaming charges

New EU legislation came into force today to cap data wholesale roaming charges within Europe.  The new cap limits the amount operators can charge each other to carry customer’s data traffic while abroad, lowering the price from €1 to €0.80 per megabyte. In addition, all carriers will now have to stop providing data roaming services when users have racked up a total of €50 in charges, the idea being to protect customers from ‘bill shock’ when they return home.

The EU’s digital agenda commissioner, Neelie Kroes, is keen to promote more competition in EU roaming charges, which operators tend to set very close to the legal permitted maximums. These maximum charges are currently under review and the Commission will provide more information about how it intends to ensure increased competition when the results of this review are published in mid-2011.

Source: ZDNet.co.uk

T-Mobile and Orange merge to form ‘Everything Everywhere’