Farmington New Hampshire Police Department

A new type of scam that is making the rounds is the “Tech Support Scam”.  Criminals will call you and claim to be from a reputable company like Microsoft and tell you that they have detected that your computer is infected with a virus.  They then will then try to get you to pay to have the virus removed or for some maintenance or warrant plan, or they may try to get you to go to a website that will actually infect your computer and give the scammer remote access to it.  Like other scammers they usually become aggressive until they get what they want.

Real tech support departments don’t call you.  If you get one of these calls hang up, do not follow any of their directions and do not give them any information.  Do not be fooled by caller ID if it shows up saying Microsoft Inc.  Caller ID can easily be faked.  If you want to look into it further, you contact the real company through an official channel.  You can usually find a phone number or email address on the software manual or on the companies website.