Not a baiter, maybe an emergency... please help?

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Hello I'm New here! Joined: 08 Jan 2015 Posts: 6

So, here's my first post and a bit of a story for you. It ends with me needing, some help, if you want to skip the story and read the last paragraph to help me out, great. Sorry if this is the wrong place for this.

So, a few minutes ago I received a phone call. The caller ID said it was my uncle, and since he should be at work now I thought it was odd. Either it was an emergency or he buttdialed me. Either way I felt like I should answer.

Imagine my surprise when someone with an Indian accent answered the phone. He claimed he was with some Windows Support company (forgot the name they used, I think they did too) and claimed he had reports our computer had been hacked. In my defense, my scamdar did go off and I thought it was fishy, but seeing as A. we had work done on it recently and B. I try to give everyone the benefit of the doubt until I have reason otherwise, so I went along and tried to verify my 'scamdar' or him.

So, while on the phone with him started googling for the scam, meanwhile I did follow the steps. When he had me find a list of files he claimed had been corrupted as 'proof' (yeah... I smelled something really fishy now but... still needed to check it out, so I kept playing into it while googling).

To summarize the rest of the story, I did eventually call him out on it when I found the scam. He asked me what I saw on the screen, I read him a story on wired.com about this very scam. He called me an ass hole, threatened me, I told him to have "great day" and I hung up.

That said playing into it was stupid. I should have known better. Since he did threaten me I wondered if I had went too far and immediately shut down the computer, grabbed my laptop and went to the first scam site I knew. So here I am... hi!

So here's my question: let's say I brought up Teamview, then I hit absolutely nothing. No buttons or anything. I only opened it and closed it. Could anything happen? Like, did I give to much? I know nothing about Teamview. Bonus question, how did he get our number? Should I talk to our repair guy about this?

Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2015 6:53 pm

To be clear, did you download teamviewer?

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 08 Jan 2015 Posts: 6

No, it was already on the computer. It was on the RUN command. I did not get it off the internet.

Elite Baiter Joined: 21 Jan 2010 Posts: 1474

Did you give him the Machine ID and the password associated with teamviewer on your machine? If so there's an option to reset that password and you should either change it immediately or restart the machine - that will reset it. Did you install TV at his behest? If so then uninstall it immediately as it will have unattended access enabled and he can use your PC. The good news is that it will display a warning to tell you that he's controlling it so he will probably try at an odd time hoping you're not there.
The bottom line is - if you don't need TV for a friend to remote control your machine then uninstall it.
If you need any help with TV I use it extensively at work so feel free to ask,

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 08 Jan 2015 Posts: 6

No I didn't do any of that. I literally just opened a window and did nothing else. I told him nothing it said, I downloaded nothing, I did not give him any numbers. There were no installations.

I have that computer back on, so far it looks fine. Anything else I should check?

Elite Baiter Joined: 21 Jan 2010 Posts: 1474

What window was it? A file explorer window or an internet page?
Did he ask you to go to a webpage?
If you look in the system tray - bottom right hand corner is there a teamviewer icon like this one?

Sorry about all the questions - I don't want to miss anything.

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 08 Jan 2015 Posts: 6

I was looking through files on my computer.
No, no webpages. He had no idea I was on the internet trying to figure out what was going on. He had no clue I was on the net at all.

No, no icon.

Don't apologize. I asked for help and I'm glad you are being so thorough. Anything else I should look for?

*** BANNED *** Joined: 26 Jul 2012 Posts: 1116

A quick side question, you mentioned you did some work to this computer then got this call from your uncle. What sort of work did you do to the computer?

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 08 Jan 2015 Posts: 6

It wasn't the same computer, this was my desktop that was my laptop. It needed some maintenance done, it was getting slow and wifi was weird. Turned out I had just been forgetting to defrag it.

*** BANNED *** Joined: 26 Jul 2012 Posts: 1116

Rodge wrote:

In my defense, my scamdar did go off and I thought it was fishy, but seeing as A. we had work done on it recently and B. I try to give everyone the benefit of the doubt until I have reason otherwise, so I went along and tried to verify my 'scamdar' or him.

So the work you reference there was a defrag?

Posted: Fri Jan 09, 2015 3:38 am

If you did not give him the password for Team-Viewer he has not had access to your PC.

From what you have written you stopped him at the right time and have nothing to worry about.

Posted: Fri Jan 09, 2015 3:50 am

calvin wrote:

The bottom line is - if you don't need TV for a friend to remote control your machine then uninstall it.

^^ This - if you have no real need to allow people remote access to your computer then get rid of TV.

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 08 Jan 2015 Posts: 6

Vampiremerchant wrote:

If you did not give him the password for Team-Viewer he has not had access to your PC.

From what you have written you stopped him at the right time and have nothing to worry about.

Good to know, thank you guys a ton for helping me out.

B8er wrote:

^^ This - if you have no real need to allow people remote access to your computer then get rid of TV.

Shared computer. So I am very hesitant to delete anything. I should look into it though.

Once again. Thanks everyone who helped out.

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