Event Viewer as sales tool

[Don Phillipson]

An elderly relative writes: "I had a "cold call" this afternoon, and
ended up on the phone for nearly an hour, with some foreign gentleman,
probably in India, who claimed he was calling from Microsoft Windows telling
me that I had numerous "warnings and Errors" on my system which was slowing
it down and I think was basically trying to sell me security protection."

I reassured her

You definitely do not need to worry about all those scarlet blobs
marked ERROR in / Start / Control Panel / Administrative Tools / Event
Viewer. Every NT and XP and Vista PC records these in glorious
technicolour
and 99 per cent of their users do not know they are there and do not need
to know.
If curious about the Event Viewer, you can read plenty about it
via Vista Help. If you click on any particular red item ERROR /
Properties and follow the prompts, you will usually find:
"User Action
No user action is required."

This is the first time I heard of normal Event Viewer data being
used as a sort of threat to sell software. It reminded me of the
rumours about Win98's Long Filename Module being a virus
just because its black icon looked menacing.

 

[MowGreen]

An elderly relative writes: "I had a "cold call" this afternoon, and
ended up on the phone for nearly an hour, with some foreign gentleman,
probably in India, who claimed he was calling from Microsoft Windows telling
me that I had numerous "warnings and Errors" on my system which was slowing
it down and I think was basically trying to sell me security protection."

I reassured her

This is the first time I heard of normal Event Viewer data being
used as a sort of threat to sell software. It reminded me of the
rumours about Win98's Long Filename Module being a virus
just because its black icon looked menacing.

This type of scam also will have the caller stating that the OP's system
is infected according to "data" sent to MS and would they like they
system cleaned up ? Or that they represent the OP's ISP and their ISP
called them to inform the OP that they have malware on their system.

More malware is usually installed, the system usually becomes part of a
botnet, and then the caller asks for *money*.

Don’t fall for phony phone tech support
http://blogs.msdn.com/securitytipst.../don-t-fall-for-phony-phone-tech-support.aspx


MowGreen
================
*-343-* FDNY
Never Forgotten
================

"Security updates should *never* have *non-security content* prechecked