Tech support scams prey on urgency and unfamiliarity, often starting with a fake warning popup or an unsolicited phone call claiming your device is infected.

Common Warning Signs

Legitimate companies like Microsoft or Apple do not call you unprompted about a virus, and real security warnings never ask you to call a phone number or grant remote access to your computer. A popup claiming your device is infected, with a countdown timer, is a scam.

What to Do

Close the browser tab or restart the device rather than clicking anything in the popup, and never grant remote desktop access to anyone who contacted you first. If you ever did fall for one, changing passwords and running a legitimate antivirus scan afterward is the right next step.

Simply knowing that real companies never initiate contact this way defuses most of these scams instantly.