It was just as I thought. . . a scam. But what a gutsy one from the guy named John Barker who claimed to be calling from the Canadian Cyber Centre, warning me that our home computers might be under attack.
He asked for the computer licensing security ID so he could “verify” the attack. And while I’m no computer genius, I figured that giving him the ID number would probably give him unlimited access to my computer. I told “John Barker” that I didn’t believe him because his phone number came up on the display as an international call.
So, I asked him what ID number he had and for his phone number so that I could verify that he indeed was calling from the government agency. Not surprisingly, he gave a fake number.
After posting a blog about this and something on Facebook, I heard back from several people that they’d had similar calls from people claiming to be from Microsoft.
And after emailing the Canadian Cyber Incident Response Centre (which is the correct name of the federal government agency that deals with cyber security issues), I received this lightning fast response:
“We have received many reports of suspicious calls purported to be from Canadian Cyber Incident Response Centre in the past few weeks. These are indeed cases of fraud. For information on how to report fraud, you may wish to contact the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre.
The Canadian Cyber Incident Response Centre is mandated to help ensure the security and resilience of the vital non-federal government cyber systems that underpin Canada’s national security, public safety and economic prosperity. CCIRC is Canada’s national coordination centre for the prevention and mitigation of, preparedness for, response to, and recovery from cyber incidents on non-federal government systems.
For more information about CCIRC products, please consult Public Safety Canada’s website: http://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/prg/ns/cybr-scrty/index-eng.aspx
“The Government of Canada has also launched a national public awareness campaign on cyber security called Get Cyber Safe that provides Canadians with the information and tools they need to stay safe while online, including how to detect scams and fraud: http://www.getcybersafe.gc.ca/index-eng.aspx
“You may also wish to visit the links below:
Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre
http://www.antifraudcentre-centreantifraude.ca/
info@antifraudcentre.ca
1-888-495-8501
RCMP – Scams & Fraud
http://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/scams-fraudes/index-eng.htm
http://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/scams-fraudes/rep-sig-eng.htm
That does not surprise me anymore. Got a call like that before and this guy named Mark said I got a virus in my computer and that it was sending alerts to their system. Said he could remove it for a fee. But he was asking me to allow him remote access to my computer, I didn't think I could trust him. I hung up. I reported the call to http://www.callercenter.com afterwards to raise a warning.
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