Always inspect an email before blindly replying, clicking or calling a number. A company like Norton or Geek Squad would never use a free email service to send an invoice. Closer examination of the email will reveal it is from a free email service like Gmail, Yahoo, etc.How can you avoid falling for a scam like this? Like many phishing scams, this uses a sense of urgency to try to induce panic. The full alert from CISA can be read here but the best way to defend yourself against this scam is to be suspicious and aware. At this point they can do whatever they want, steal your passwords, transfer funds from your account to their own, anything. Once the software is installed the scammers have full access to your computer and will offer to aid you in removing the charge by having you login to your bank account to reverse it … you can see where this is going. Since these are legitimate software, your anti-virus won’t stop the install. so they can help you “cancel” the payment. The scammer on the other end will claim to be with a help desk and try to get you to install remote monitoring software, like LogMeIn, AnyDesk, etc. The truly scary part of this scam happens if you call the number in the email. They can’t detect the text in the image file, making it easier for it to get thru to you.Īn example of what this might look like is below, from the FTC’s website:

Why? Because anti-phishing protections in your email are generally looking for text or other patterns they can recognize as malicious.

These generally do not have a clickable link, and in some cases the “invoice” is attached as a. To reverse or avoid the charges, the user is asked to call a number. The phishing emails claim to be an invoice from companies such as Geek Squad and Norton, usually noting that your credit card has been, or will be, charged for the subscription. Phishing campaigns spoofing tech support or anti-virus renewals have been trending for months. According to a joint advisory by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the National Security Agency (NSA) cyber criminals are actively exploiting remote management software, like LogMeIn and AnyDesk, in phishing campaigns aimed to steal money from victims.

Using anydesk to delete scammer files