Identity thieves seeking to hack your computer to steal your passwords and other credentials for your online accounts have started using a new technique to persuade their victims into giving the cybercriminal access to their computers. This new technique involves flooding the targeted victim with junk emails, often called spam, in such large amounts that they are often able to overwhelm their victims’ email accounts spam protection capabilities. The spam sent is not in and of itself harmful, but generally appear to be newsletter sign up confirmations from actually legitimate companies that are unaware that their companies are being used in this scam. The next step in the scam is a phone call from the scammer posing as your email provider in which they indicate that they have noticed the large amounts of spam the victim is receiving and offers help in remedying the problem. They tell the targeted victim that in order to help, they will need remote access to their victim’s computer and convinces the victim to download remote management software such as AnyDesk. Unfortunately, once the victim provides remote access to his or her computer, the cybercriminal is able to steal the passwords and credentials required to access the various online accounts of the victim.
TIPS
As a rule you should never provide remote access to your computer to anyone other than someone you regularly use for maintenance of your computer. In addition, as I often remind you, whenever you get a phone call, text message or email from someone, you can never be sure who is actually contacting you so you should never give anyone remote access to your computer based on such a communication without absolutely confirming that the communication is legitimate and the remote access is actually required, which it never will. A quick call to your email provider will confirm that the call was from a scammer. Finally, your email provider will not be calling you about spam you receive in your email account.
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#spam #remoteaccess
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