Technical support scam

A technical support scam, or tech support scam, is a type of scam in which a scammer claims to offer a legitimate technical support service for computing devices connected to the Internet. The scam may be intimated by a cold telephone call from the thief to the victim, or victims may contact scammers in response to a fake pop-up resembling an error message, or via fake "help lines" advertised on websites operated by the scammers.

Technical support scammers use social engineering and a variety of confidence tricks to persuade their victim of the presence of problems on their computer or mobile device, such as a malware infection, when there are no issues with the victim's device. They frequently take full control of the victim's computer with remote control software.

The scammer will then persuade the victim to pay to fix the fictitious "problems" that they claim to have found. Payment is made to the scammer via gift cards or cryptocurrency, which are hard to trace and have few consumer protections in place. There is risk of potentially higher losses to thieves who persuade victims to connect, with password and two-factor authentication if relevant, to online banking, or to transfer large sums to a "safe account" to "protect it from hackers accessing their computer". Technical support scams started no later than 2008.

A 2017 study of technical support scams found that of the IPs that could be geolocated, 85% could be traced to locations in India, 7% to locations in the United States and 3% to locations in Costa Rica. Research into tech support scams suggests that millennials and Gen Z have the highest exposure to such scams; however, it is thought that older people are more likely to fall for these scams and lose money to them.

Technical support scams were named by Norton as the top phishing threat to consumers in October 2021; Microsoft found that 60% of consumers who took part in a survey had been exposed to a technical support scam within the previous twelve months. Responses to technical support scams include lawsuits brought against companies responsible for running fraudulent call centres, and scam baiting.