Total money lost $40
Type of a scam Phishing
I purchased a McAfee Total Protection 1 year Subscription from a big box store. I followed the instructions on the activation card inside the McAff box. However, once I entered the activation code a message popped up saying that my code was inactive and to not enter it again, but to call their help line, which I did. I was recieved and talked to someone who said he needed to look further into the problem and would call me back. He asked for my phone number. 20 min later, he called back and explained that their must be problems with my computer’s opperating systems that is preventing the new protection from downloading. He wanted to look into it and show me. I let him into my computer by following his quick instructions of clicking on this and that. Once in my computer he showed me a screen that there was alot of critical errors that needed to be dealt with. He said that he could clean up my computer (I assumed that it was going to be for a price) so I responded that I was uncomfortable with him being IN my computer. He immediately initiated our disconnection, suggested I bring my computer to a brick and morter store and proceeded to hang up.
The brick and morter store discovered that I had entered mcafee.com/activate instead of McAfee.com/activate . This had lead me to a fake website (which ‘looked’ legit). I ended up with a stolen McAfee (10 devise) subscription code, but am lucky I didn’t persue the offer of having him ‘fix’ my computer… leading to him obtaining my credit card number and additional information.
This is a well designed scam that only takes the difference of some capital letters in the search bar. If I had been more observant, I would have noticed a misspelled word in one (or more) of the website address pages.