By continuing to use the site or forum, you agree to the use of cookies, find out more by reading our GDPR policy

Fraudulent tech-support services that buy online advertising space have grown in sophistication to a level that Google cannot distinguish them from legitimate providers. Operators of tech-support scams often operate just like a legitimate business to avoid detection and to ensure their success for a longer time. Sometimes even employees are unaware of the illegal activity. Over the past few years, scammers have begun to promote their activity through search ads, claiming to be an authorized service center for products from popular companies such as Apple, Microsoft or Dell. Playing on the user's trust in the results and ads provided by Google, most of the times the scammers just have to wait for the victim to call. The tactic is powerful because the potential victims are the ones placing the call, so they have already shown some trust in the service. Tech-support scammers have become more proficient at what they do. Apart from creating websites that instill trust, they also try to obtain as much information as possible about the victim or their machine, to help them make the deceit more difficult to spot. Symantec published at the beginning of August a report on how fraudulent tech-support activity has started to integrate call optimization, a service that allows them to dynamically insert phone numbers in web pages. There is more to this post on OUR FORUM.