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costa calida EDITION costa calida
Your English Newspaper
roundtownnews.com
Issue 77
17 - 243-9 APRIL Jan 2014
Microsoft ‘Windows’ scam CYBER BANDITS are flooding homes across the Costa Blanca and Costa Calida with calls posing as IT specialists in a bid to steal from unsuspecting victims. by Jack Troughton The professional conmen pretend to be from the technical support team of Microsoft Windows in Glasgow – in fact it appears they are based at a call centre somewhere in India. Vickie Ellis had a lucky escape after repeated attempts to take money from her Spanish and UK bank accounts. She told RTN: “Fortunately I didn’t lose any money because I panicked and gave the wrong card details.” However, she said repeated attempts were made to take cash by two companies, Guiits Global Ltd of Mauritius and KBK Infotech of Calcutta. Speaking at her Moraira home, she said the unexpected call came from Microsoft came at a time she was coincidently suffering problems with her computer. Vickie said she was asked certain details about the machinery and watched the cursor move across her monitor screen as she spent an hour talking to the scammers. “I was told a colleague Leon Parker would take over my computer and run Vickie tests and clean up viruses,” she said. “I could see the cursor moving and Ellis
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then I was told I could reactivate the warranty on my computer for two years and get technical support with a registration fee of 71€ or £71.” Vickie added: “I feel really invaded and at the time I was really quite frightened – these people are totally heartless. I felt in my heart that something was wrong when they were on the telephone but you have to trust people sometimes.” After the call ended she was quick to cancel bank cards and change PIN numbers and has since installed new security programmes on her computer. “This is a real nightmare; I believe there is an awful lot of this going on. Certainly they were not in Scotland but in India,” she said. “In the background I could hear it was a call centre – I could hear voices talking in a language that certainly was not English. “Yet I felt I could not put the phone down because these people were in my computer – it was all quite horrific.” Vickie said it was easy to be fooled by the “sweet” talking scammers. “I know I was being stupid but I just did what they asked.”