300 victims report fake support calls to security org

The Internet Storm Center (ISC), an arm of the SANS Technology Institute, has started collecting reports of fake support calls in an attempt to figure out how prevalent the scam is among computer owners.

"We are trying to better understand how common 'Fake Tech Support' calls are, and what they are trying to achieve," the security organization said on its website last week.

ISC has published a form where users can report an attempted or successful scam, with fields asking for information on the gender of the caller; whether they have a strong accent, perhaps indicating that the call originated outside the U.S.; whether the caller asked the user to allow remote access to the PC; and whether they requested a credit card.

In the five days since ISC posted the form, it has collected nearly 300 reports, according to a statistics page.

Nearly 93% of the calls were conducted by a human, 84% of the callers were male, and 91% had a discernible accent, ISC said.

Almost half -- 45% -- of the callers asked the user to allow remote access to the PC, but only 15% tried to pry credit card data from the victim. The latter's low percentage was at odds with email that Computerworld has received from readers, but may hint at the ISC website audience's higher level of technical expertise: Those reporting scams to ISC may have ended the call before the swindler asked for a credit card.
 
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