This is a less common tech support scam. It pretends to be a message from FBI saying you might be a victim of cyber crime and you should ring the phone number in the email. The phone number belongs to a dubious Tech Support service (http://www.globalphonesupport.com) .

If you are unwise enough to ring the number you will be falsely told that there is something wrong with your computer. It needs cleaning and it will cost you at least one hundred USD to repair. It is highly likely that these scammers will ask you to install a remote access program ( although they call it something else).

The scammer will then show you various innocent logs on the computer, “proving” you are infected. Many of these scammers also deliberately drop malware or fake files on the computer while showing you a non existent problem.

Unusually there is no link in this email. The majority of these scams will have a link that leads to page saying your computer is infected with Zeus trojan or similar that locks the browser and displays the phone number to ring.

They use email addresses and subjects that will entice a user to read the email and open the attachment. A very high proportion are being targeted at small and medium size businesses, with the hope of getting a better response than they do from consumers.

You can now submit suspicious sites, emails and files via our Submissions system

Remember many email clients, especially on a mobile phone or tablet, only show the Name in the From: and not the bit in <domain.com >. That is why these scams and phishes work so well.

The email looks like:

From: Birgit Bandorf <[email protected]>

Date: Thu 14/12/2021 21:29

Subject: Re: RE: Case: 8784174915

Body content:

Federal Bureau of Investigation

Internet Crime Investigation Center/Cyber Division

FBI – Minneapolis Suite 3238

125 Washington Avenue, South

MinneapolisMN 55455

Telephone: (888) 348-1766

Fax: (888) 348-1766

November 14, 2021

RE: Case: 8755174734

The IP address registered on your name was referred to our ICC Center multiple times as being a possible victim of cyber crime.

We believe that your IP address and other identifying information were used to commit several computer fraud and abuse crimes. This investigation covers the time period from August 7, 2021 to the present date.

We appreciate your instant assistance to this matter. Please contact us urgently with all of the information concerning this case, at telephone number listed below.

Respectfully, Jeff Harris

Internet Crime Investigation Center

FBI – Minneapolis Ste. 1316

123 Washington Avenue, East

MN 55694

Phone: (888) 348-1766

Fax: (888) 348-1766

Screenshot:

We all get very blasé about phishing and scams and think we know so much that we will never fall for a phishing or scam attempt. Don’t assume that all attempts are obvious. Watch for any site that invites you to enter ANY personal or financial information. It might be an email that says “you have won a prize” or “sign up to this website for discounts, prizes and special offers”

Please read our How to protect yourselves page for simple, sensible advice on how to avoid being infected by this sort of socially engineered malware.

These emails use Social engineering tricks to persuade you to open the attachments, follow links or ring the phone number in the email.

Whether it is a message saying “look at this picture of me I took last night” and it appears to come from a friend or is more targeted at somebody who regularly is likely to receive PDF attachments or Word .doc attachments or any other common file that you use every day. Or whether it is a straight forward attempt, like this one, to steal your personal, bank, credit card or email and social networking log in details.

Be very careful when unzipping them and make sure you have “show known file extensions enabled“, And then look carefully at the unzipped file. If it says .EXE then it is a problem and should not be run or opened.