Impersonating Microsoft

Victim Location 30097

Type of a scam Tech Support

I was contacted by phone on Monday, Aug. 15, 2016. The caller ID on my phone showed the name Maryam Ashraf from phone number 516-374-2418. The male caller identified himself as an employee of Microsoft and he had an Asian subcontinent accent (such as Indian, Pakistani or Bangladeshi).

He proceeeded to explain that there was malware detected on my home computer and that it was time critical that I should address the problem so that all my personal files would not be lost. He asked for the computer’s ID number, ready to provide instructions on how to retrieve the number.

I had been besieged by this same phone scam during the summer of 2014 while living in Sweden, but this was my first encounter with the scam here in the U.S.