Tech support scams marketing

Phone scams are an ongoing problem in many countries, with significant presence in US, UK and Australia where elderly or vulnerable are targeted by criminals. Typically, scams are prompted by a pop-up that seems to freeze the browser victim is using and displays a warning about a potential threat, be it damaging computer equipment, defrauding money from their online banking system or stealing their online identity so other criminals will commit crimes using it. In vast majority of the cases these are empty threats, because the goal is to make a victim call a phone number visible in said pop-up where a scammer on the other end of the phone will try to manipulate the victim into paying her or him money for fixing the made-up "problem" with victim's computer.

Sample scam pop-up
source: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/virus-removal/remove-tech-support-scam-popups-in-your-browser

It is interesting how scammers target their victims. Contents of the pop-up indicates to a a person with any internet experience it is not coming from a legitimate tech company (e.g. Microsoft, as in the exemplary pop-up above). Therefore, scammers know that a person calling a number on that pop-up is likely not computer-savvy and might be prone to manipulation that exploits it.

The way real damage is done is by using remote access tools (eg. TeamViewer, AnyDesk), that scammers use to get access to victim's computer. This requires a victim to grant scammer access to remotely control their machine. It is hard to battle, as victims are convinced this is a necessary step to diagnose issue with their computer, however some remote access tools providers are taking measures to guard most vulnerable users against those practices. One example is TeamViewer, which displays a large warning about potential fraud to users who are about to grant remote access to a foreign third party or coming from locations with concentration of scamming businesses.