{"id":46004,"date":"2012-03-18T20:18:53","date_gmt":"2012-03-18T18:18:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=46004"},"modified":"2012-03-19T10:19:15","modified_gmt":"2012-03-19T08:19:15","slug":"new-phone-scam-warning-in-sa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/security\/46004-new-phone-scam-warning-in-sa.html","title":{"rendered":"New phone scam warning in SA"},"content":{"rendered":"

Internet users should be wary of an international phone scam that allows people full access to their computer, according to a report on Sunday.<\/p>\n

The Weekend Argus reported that victims get a call on their landline from someone claiming to be a Microsoft employee, alerting them to a computer problem.<\/p>\n

The scammers claim the victim’s computer is submitting error messages and contains corrupt files that could damage it.<\/p>\n

According to the report, the user is led to a program called Microsoft<\/a> Event Viewer, which displays error messages. They are then told to go to a website and download software to fix the problem.<\/p>\n

Some South Africans had fallen victim to the scam, giving over full control of their computer with an added insult of a 185 pounds sterling fee.<\/p>\n

Microsoft were aware of the scam, saying it was not its policy to make phone calls of this kind to its customers.<\/p>\n

Related articles<\/strong><\/p>\n

Don’t spam me please<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Beware ‘switch off cellphone’ scam<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Vodacom fights scam SMSes<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Internet users should be wary of an international phone scam that allows people full access to their computer<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":29286,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[35,123,9962],"class_list":["post-46004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-security","tag-headline","tag-microsoft","tag-weekend-argus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46004"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46004"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46004\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46006,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46004\/revisions\/46006"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}