The Call Us Scam

This scam features a phone call to the scammers rather than the usual e-mail links. The scammer sends out e-mails that try to look like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, etc and convince you that someone purchased something using your account. There's just a phone number to call. When you call the number it connects you to a call center in India where they'll walk you through installing remote control software they'll use to take over your computer and do bad things. It's best practice to access your various accounts from a known-good website rather than a link or phone number in an e-mail. When searching for the phone numbers for companies using Google/etc, be sure to spell the company name correctly. It's a common practice for scammers to create fake company websites using misspellings of the real website or similar domain names. It would be a shame to avoid one scam to only get caught by another.

The Scam Video

Identifying Traits

The e-mail itself (shown in the video) has several warning signs when combined with the video:

• Incorrect domain. I'll give them credit, they actually found a semi-legitimate looking domain for this. Microsoft would be sending from Microsoft.com though.
• Confusing branding. The e-mail claims to come from Microsoft, the call center says "helpdesk", and the website is Amazon.