Happy SysAdmin Day!

A day in the life of a SysAdmin… 😉

Telemarketers with virus scanners…

I got a phone call this afternoon from a lady on the indian subcontinent that told me to quickly turn on my computer as it has a virus.

Uh oh! I’m so glad they called as my anti-virus hadn’t picked up anything!

She told me to quickly turn on my computer and open the administration tools. Urgently! Fortunately, she guided me through opening this up and and getting to the Windows Event Viewer which was great as I was quite scared and nervous that my PC would crash and I would lose everything.

And she was right… there were ERRORS in my logs! Crap!

<—- End Sarcasm —->

Ok, Ok, I wasn’t really worried and I knew this was a scam from the beginning but wanted to see where they were going and which scam they were trying to pull.

They basically want to sell you an “Extended Warranty” for your PC which includes an anti-virus subscription. This scam is several years old and gets recycled every few years. It is run by a site called “teche4pc dot com” run by some, probably dodgy, company call “Met Technologies”.

The first thing they try and get you to do is turn on your PC and guide you through opening Event Viewer (they always assume you are running Windows).

Event Viewer maintains logs about program, security and system events on Windows and, according to Microsoft, can be used to view and manage the event logs, gather information about hardware and software problems, and monitor Windows security events.

Event Viewer system logs display prominent ‘Error’ icons, which often relate to trivial matters like the failure of a process to start, but could be used by a scammer to convince someone their computer needs ‘fixing’ by running a script or, in this case, by purchasing an “Extended Support Warranty”.

However, you can bet that the support you receive would cause more problems than you started with and end up in an endless stream of invoices and credit card charges.

Be careful out there! Also, if they have blocked their Caller ID and you can’t call back on a recognised number don’t divulge any personal information.

If you do actually need anti-virus stick to one of the known brands: AVG, Avira, Kaspersky, Symantec, McAfee, etc. Any of them are better than these questionable companies. Or, if you want a simple free solution, give Microsoft’s Security Essentials a go.

Apple users becoming an increased target for hackers

The long run of Apple Mac users being able to look down on their Windows brethren struggling with spyware, viruses and other security exploits may, unfortunately, be coming to an end. As the popularity and market share of Apple’s OS X operating system has increased in recent years it has reached the “tipping point” at which the Internet’s scammers and other criminal elements see the potential in it as a target for their exploits.

Apple security exploits on the rise
Source: Cisco Security Annual Report 2010

The importance of choosing a good password

It is surprising to me how common the practice of using the same password for all your logins is. Without a doubt it is hugely convenient to not have to remember dozens of password for each of the websites and other internet services you may use on a daily or weekly basis.

The obligatary first post…

I run a managed IT services business in Cairns, Queensland. This will be my professional blog to put my ideas on business, software and other IT related areas.