Clever scam artists, the only criminals we refer to as artists, are increasingly setting up phony websites that appear to be for customer service or tech support of many of the companies with which we do business.  They also purchase telephone numbers that are a single digit off of the legitimate phone numbers for many companies’ tech support or customer support in order to take advantage of common consumer misdials.  Compounding the problem is the fact that many companies, particularly social media companies, do not provide a customer service telephone number to call and speak to a real person about your problem.  They only provide online support.

Often the scammers either purchase an ad to put their phony website with their bogus tech support phone number at the top of a search engine search or, if they are sophisticated enough, they are able to manipulate the algorithms used by Google and other search engines to have their phony website with bogus tech support numbers appear high in a search engine search.

TIPS

The best place to look for a telephone number for customer support or tech support is right on your bill or the legitimate website of the company.     Even when you do call legitimate tech support or customer service telephone numbers take extra care to make sure that you are dialing correctly and not calling a clever scammer who may have purchased a telephone number that is a digit off of the correct phone number in an attempt to ensnare people who may misdial the number.

Among the social media services that do not provide tech support by phone are Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter.  Here are links to tech support for those social media services:
Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/help/
Instagram: https://help.instagram.com/
Snapchat: https://support.snapchat.com/en-US
Twitter: https://support.twitter.com/

Here are some tech support phone numbers for popular companies:

Amazon – 888-280-4331                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                Microsoft – 800-642-7676                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                Apple – 800-275-2273                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    Google 650-253-0000                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        Facebook 650-543-4800 although you won’t reach a real person and the help you receive calling this number is not very helpful

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