The first tech support scams were recorded in 2008. Responses to technical support scams include lawsuits brought against companies responsible for running fraudulent call centres and scam baiting. Technical support scams were named by Norton as the top phishing threat to consumers in October 2021 Microsoft found that 60% of consumers who took part in a survey had been exposed to a technical support scam within the previous twelve months. Research into tech support scams suggests that millennials and those in generation Z have the highest exposure to such scams however, senior citizens are more likely to fall for these scams and lose money to them. A 2017 study of technical support scams found that of the IPs that could be geolocated, 85% could be traced to locations in India, 7% to locations in the United States and 3% to locations in Costa Rica. Technical support scams have occurred as early as 2008. Payment is made to the scammer through ways which are hard to trace and have fewer consumer protections in place which could allow the victim to claim their money back, usually through gift cards. The scammer will then persuade the victim to pay to fix the fictitious "problems" that they claim to have found. Technical support scammers use social engineering and a variety of confidence tricks to persuade their victim of the presence of problems on their computer or mobile device, such as a malware infection, when there are no issues with the victim's device. Victims contact scammers in a variety of ways, often through fake pop-ups resembling error messages or via fake "help lines" advertised on websites owned by the scammers. Example of a technical support scam popupĪ technical support scam, or tech support scam, is a type of fraud in which a scammer claims to offer a legitimate technical support service.
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