[AlanHo]

One of my colleagues has just been the victim of an internet scam.

He phoned me when I got back from holiday last week to unburden himself and tell me what a prat he had been in my absence.

He explained that his Epson printer/scanner stopped working on his Windows 10 computer. It would print and copy but not scan.

It is only a year old so he decided to call Epson for advice. He entered “Epson Help” in Google search and was presented with a number of Epson Support links – he chose one which provided a phone number to call for Epson support.

He called the number and spoke to a support technician who asked him to describe the fault and what steps he had already tried to remedy the problem – which he did.

The technician said he would need to consult the expert on his particular model and whether it had been effected by the recent Win 10 updates - promising to phone him back within the next 30 minutes.

15 minutes later the Epson technician phoned him to explain that the problem had indeed been caused by a recent Microsoft update. He offered to take over his computer and install a patch Epson had just developed – because they had received numerous calls with people complaining of the same problem and the solution depended on the configuration of the computer and any other software installed on it.

So – my friend followed the technicians instructions and downloaded Team Viewer to enable Epson to take over his computer.

He sat there and watched as his mouse cursor darted about opening files and programmes – sometimes the screen would go black showing just gobbledegook text and lists of symbols.

After about 15 minutes the technician said that he had found the problem and could install new software to solve the problem. My friend breathed a sigh of relief and asked him to continue.

The guy said there would be a charge of £420 including VAT for the service – he needed his credit card details to process the payment before he continued. My friend protested that Epson should not advertise free support and then not provide it. They were asking more than he paid for the printer.

The technician then replied that they were not Epson – but an Epson support agency who provided technical help to equipment owners.  He added that in determining the cause of the problem he had installed software that would not allow the computer to be used again until he completed the installation. If he did not pay – his hard drive would be wiped automatically the next time he booted the computer.

So he paid and provided his credit card details.

You know the rest don’t you – within minutes he suddenly realised he had been scammed and rang his credit card provider to try and recover the payment. Fearful that the scammer had copied all the records on his hard drive he also called his bank and other card providers to not process any payments and to issue him with new cards and PIN numbers. He has an iPad tablet he uses away from home which fortunately has a copy of his address book and the links to his web sites - which he used to change his password on every website that he uses.

Needless to say – the scammer did not release the lock on his computer and it was unusable.

Fortunately, he backs up all his documents, pictures, music etc onto an external hard drive every week. This was not attached to the computer when this incident occurred so these files will not be corrupted. He has taken the computer to Computer World from where he purchased it – and they are going to wipe the hard drive and reinstall Windows 10 from scratch (at a cost). He will have to reinstall his other software himself and copy over all his data.

He is kicking himself silly over being barmy enough to fall for the scam – but he really thought that he had called the Epson official site. He said that if someone had cold called him, rather than him call them, there is no way he would have fallen for it.

It is a salutary reminder to others how easy it is to fall for a glib tongue when you are panicking over a problem.

[asathorny]

I have some sympathy Alan, BUT, £420 for a fix when ya can buy a decent brand new printer for a fraction of that???    At that point the phone should have been relaced on it stand. 

Oh dear very sad

[nzenigma]

Thanks Alan, I think the best tip was to download weekly to an unattached hard drive,

[Dazzler]

Wow! The internet is a scary place! 

[AlanHo]

I have some sympathy Alan, BUT, £420 for a fix when ya can buy a decent brand new printer for a fraction of that???    At that point the phone should have been relaced on it stand. 

Oh dear very sad

@asa - putting the phone down would have been too late - the bastard had already buggered the hard drive before he asked for any money.

[CraigB]

Thanks Alan, I think the best tip was to download weekly to an unattached hard drive,

Yep, and it should be a system image, plain old file backups aren’t much help in a recovery situation.

[AlanHo]

I back up my Desktop computer every week using Acronis True Image set to take a full system image of my 250 GB C: drive SSD which carries the OS and all programmes and the separate 1 TB hybrid D: drive which stores all data. The full back-ups (not incremental) are stored on an external USB3 2 TB hard drive.


I also take a full backup image of both drives monthly onto a portable USB drive which is kept in the garage remote from my house for fire and theft protection.


I constantly use software called "Second Copy" to maintain an image of all my data on a 1TB external USB drive. Second copy upon computer shut-down copies across only those files that have been added, edited or deleted so is very quick and requires no manual intervention.  It is set to keep the last 3 versions of files in an archive folder. This has saved me numerous times when I have needed to revert back to an old version of a file.

This may be regarded as over-kill as a back-up strategy - but my computer is a vault of all my records, photos, music and other data going back 30 years. Some of the stuff so old it was originally created on my first "proper" computer made by Amstrad which used floppy discs for storage in a proprietary format I have had to convert from.


I also keep all the records for the Management Company for our retirement housing estate, of which I am the director. It would be a disaster if those records were ever lost.


Regarding Acronis. A few versions back you could carry out back-ups and recovery operations using the software stored on the computer. An emergency DVD or memory stick was optional. Newer versions of Acronis still allow you to backup - but no longer allow you to restore without using the emergency DVD or memory stick on boot-up.

My colleague in the sad tale above, uses an old version of Acronis and had not bothered to create an emergency disk. On those occasions when he wanted to restore a drive he used the Acronis stored on the computer. Hence - when the low life corrupted his computer he could not restore his back-up image because he was not able to load Acronis. If he had had an emergency disc - he would not have had to reinstall Windows and all his software - Acronis would have restored his computer to its none-polluted state. He was aware that I was on holiday when the problem hit - otherwise he could have had a copy of my Acronis recovery DVD.

[nzenigma]

Thanks Alan, late to look here, I used Acronis  years back but you needed to be a geek to operate it and there was not even basic backup/advice so I moved on. You and Craig have spurred me on to next weeks mission. 

[AlanHo]

I am the first to admit that Acronis has a bit of a learning curve - but it is the most reliable and sturdy backup software I have used - and I have tried most of them.

The make restoring easier - I have ensured that all my drives differ in size. This is because Acronis does not label the drives C, D, E etc - it uses numbers, drive 1, drive 2 etc and shows you the size. I am never sure whether drive C : in File Explorer is Drive 1, or 2 or 3 etc - but can identify it by its size to be sure I restore to the correct drive.

Once upon a time - and this isn't a fairy story - my C: and D: drives were both 1 GB. I wanted to restore my C: drive and assumed it would be Drive 1. It wasn't - and I finished up with my OS amd programmes on two drives with all my data obliterated. I recovered from the error by restoring the C: and D: drives from the Acronis backup but it was 3 hours of my life wasted

Lessom learned - I swapped by 1 TB C: drive for a 250 GB SSD to clarify the situation and have not make that mistake again.


If you do decide to revert to Acronis - here is a comprehensive guide to the processes

How to Back Up a Hard Drive and Restore Your Computer

[Shambles]

@AlanHo - tell your mate that rogue scammer code could still be living in his SYSTEM32 folder, so to be on the safe side he should delete it

[AlanHo]

@Shambles - how could that be - the computer has been reformatted and Windows 10 installed from scratch. I haven't seen him today but yesterday he was busy reinstalling his software and getting ready to restore his data.

I will do as you suggest - but first I am intrigued how the System 32 folder can remain infected.  Are you saying that the whole System 32 folder should be deleted? - mine measure 6.6 GB and contains 15,896 files. It seems a rather drastic step - will it have side effects or is the whole folder benign?  I have a horrible feeling my gullibility is being tested.

[CraigB]

@AlanHo - tell your mate that rogue scammer code could still be living in his SYSTEM32 folder, so to be on the safe side he should delete it

[Shambles]

gullibility

There's no such word in the English dictionary

[AlanHo]

Steve - you have now given your game away. 

You must try harder - I may be an old fogey - but I am still a wise and cautious one.