Support Scams

Technical support scams can begin in a variety of different ways. You may receive a call or have a pop-up stating that your computer is infected with a virus or malware.

What do these pop-ups look like?

What should I do when I receive a support scam pop-up?

If you are comfortable doing so, you can close the process with Task Manager. Otherwise, contact the IT Help Desk.

1. Press CTRL+SHIFT+DEL or right click on the Start button and select Task Manager
2. You'll then need to find the process (Internet Browser) which is running the scam pop-up. On campus computers, this will be chrome.exe, iexplorer.exe, or firefox.exe.
3. Once you locate the process, highlight it can select End Process.

Clicking Links

You never want to click anything on the support scam. Often a Close or Exit button could be the very thing that allows the malware to download and get installed on your computer.

I clicked the link, what should I do?

Save your work and shutdown the computer as quickly as possible. Contact the IT Help Desk. Reset your password.