2gro scam - fake virus phone call

I got a scam call from 2gro at the weekend but fortunately - despite this blog's name - I was not taken in by a cold call purporting to be from a IT help desk offering to fix a virus infection and improve the performance of my PC. The guy was very evasive about what software was doing the reporting or how anonymous fault reporting would give him my phone number. Then he wanted me to grant him remote access to my machine to diagnose and fix the supposed problem. No way! I only do that to trusted people where I have initiated the call, end of conversation, goodbye scammer, *click*.

It is extraordinary the lengths scammers will go to create the illusion of credibility:

• web site (http://www.2gro.net/)
• twitter account (http://twitter.com/2gro)
• blog or two (http://virus-spyware-removal.blogspot.com/;
  http://jennacarter.wordpress.com/)
• whole heap of press releases saying they are over these malicious rumours.

But it is all fake - smoke and mirrors. Nothing older than July 2010 even though the caller claimed they had been in business ten years. Both the office addresses are, in fact, of registration companies offering quick and cheap company formation services not real offices at all. No means of contact other than a phone number which takes you to the same call centre with the same flim-flam.

Stu Forrest's experience was exactly the same as mine:
"Received a brilliant Scam call yesterday"
"From an IT Company (www.2gro.com) suggesting that my computer had been sending warning and error messages to them, that I should go to a PC Share website, download a viewer so that they could go into my PC and show me the warning messages and make my PC run better. Read more..."

The Telegraph article explains more how these scams work
"Virus phone scam being run from call centres in India"
Britons targeted by cold callers pretending to be from Microsoft phoning to fix a fake computer problem. Beware cold callers – especially those claiming your computer has a virus. Read more..."

This has been a public service announcement :-)