I hadn’t heard of this, but Woody Leonhard is a long-time industry author and columnist so this certainly caught my attention…there are apparently scam artists out there that call Windows users, say they are from Microsoft, and are calling to help with a problem they reported.   The scammer goes through a convincing conversation with the user that ultimately leads to asking the user for their credit card number to complete the problem diagnosis and resolution, since they are out of free support period.  You can read about it here….

Two things…first of all, as Woody points out, Microsoft doesn’t work this way! They don’t have the resources to respond personally to each and every user reported technical problem.  In certain cases a user could receive a call from Microsoft in response to an escalation or specific commitment from someone at Microsoft.   And second, legitimate consulting organizations like Computer Troubleshooters don’t work that way either! In the particular instance that Woody discusses, the (alleged) scammer references a seemingly legit support web site to verify his credentials to the user (kinda like this web site!)….but just like Microsoft, we don’t have the resources to reach out to users that we are not already servicing and offer to fix a particular problem for a fee.

Bottom line – if you get a call such as this, be wary…and if you do have a computer issue, give us a call.