Those pop-up alerts that typically look like legitimate messages from Apple or Microsoft to call “toll-free” about your computer virus are likely coming from a boiler room near New Delhi, India.
While most people ignore these ominous warnings, one in five will go down that rabbit hole and 6% overall end up handing over their credit card information, convinced the tech guy on the other end of the line is there to help, The New York Times reported.
On Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, New Delhi police raided 16 fake tech-support centers in the city’s suburbs and arrested about three dozen people. Another 24 people were arrested in 10 similar raids across the region last month.
One of those neighborhoods, Gautam Budh Nagar, saw 50 police officers storm through a fake call center that they say scammed thousands of dollars from Americans and Canadians.
“The modus operandi was to send a pop-up on people’s systems using a fake Microsoft logo,” senior superintendent of police Ajay Pal Sharma told the Times.
After making contact, the fake rep would tell the unassuming customer that it would take anywhere from $99 to $1,000 to extract the virus, Sharma said.
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