Royal Scams

It's great news that the William and Kate have had a royal baby boy!

However, as with most high profile news stories, you need to be very cautious of scammers and fraudsters using the good news as a means for distributing malware and committing fraud.  

Remember if it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is! 

If someone's sending you a link to a picture or something else then you need to keep a few things in mind:

1. Just because a link or email has come from a trusted friend, doesn't mean to say that its a safe email. Their account might have been hacked. 

2. If it's legitimate and nothing bad or malicious then it should be available elsewhere on the net - places like the BBC website keep up to date with all the news and gossip - try looking there 

3. Always be careful opening attachments. 

ISP Phone SCAM

It's a crime!

The dodgy folk are now trying a new variation on the previously mentioned Microsoft Scam.  

They've obviously realised that word has got round that nobody is trusting the "I'm speaking from Windows" speech and now they've replaced it with "I am from Technical support at your Internet Service Provider", they say something along the lines of "we have noticed on our servers that each time you switch your computer on, you are not getting full internet speed and this is because of a virus on your machine. " 

Telephone Scam - Not Microsoft or Windows

If someone phones you up and says that they're from Microsoft or "Windows" and that there's a problem with your computer being infected by a virus,  just say "no thanks" and hang up.

Its not Microsoft or anything to do with Windows - they never phone people up at home out of the blue like this.

It's a scam!  

Some of the aims of the scam are:

• Gain access to your computer to install viruses and other bad programs to monitor everything you do
• Obtain banking information - credit card information
• Charge you a lot of money for supposidly fixing this problem that doesn't exist