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Dell & Event Viewer Scam
Sorry if I'm in the wrong place, but the Dell community site has shut down it's thread on this and I know there are a lot of knowledgeable people here. (I can't seem to log in there anyway, even though I have a valid Dell customer account. (Their "community" is a separate login from their "customer" account.)). This is not about Win 7 per se, although I am running Windows 7 x64.
Last night, I got a call from a guy who represented himself as being from Dell, and said my computer had been taken over by a bot and was causing havoc on the Internet. He sounded just like Dell support sounds when you call them. He knew my name. He knew my Dell model. He had me look at the event viewer, and pointed out the errors that are in there as indicative of the problem. He then wanted remote access to my computer, at which point I terminated the call. Today, Dell support confirms that they did not make this call. I have done some reading, and I understand that scaring folks with event viewer errors is a common scam. But here's the catchy part: this guy knew the ID tag string on my Dell computer. That's a unique ID that Dell assigns to each computer they sell. I have found one other thread where somebody reported the same thing, but it was in the Dell community, and Dell closed the thread.
Here's my question: how could this guy have known that tag string? Dell support today, when I called, said hackers have a way of getting to that. Could that be true? Personally I don't believe it. I rather suspect that Dell has had a major information breach, and won't admit it. I was just wondering if anyone here knows any more about this.
Incidentally, FWIW, I've been running checks all day and so far find no infection on my computer.
Thanks for any insight.
Last edited by rkl122; 20 Aug 2014 at 21:24. Reason: Clarity