The last few days I have been getting a lot of calls from “Unknown Caller” for which I didn’t pick up. This morning I got a call from a number in the 845 area code so I answered.
It was my friendly Dell Support rep from India!
Hello, this is Dell support, we detected some malware activity on your computer.
Dell Data Breached
The guy had all my information: my name, the phone number I gave Dell, and even knew the Dell model I had and about a tech support call I made last year to replace a bad motherboard. He even had an Indian accent just like Dell Support!
I can see how some people would fall for this, this is known as “social engineering” where an attacker attempts to social engineer someone into going to a website to “scan your computer for malware” which of course will turn up positive (and may actually install malware). Then “Dell Support” will charge a fee to remove the malware that was just installed.
Since Dell isn’t as forthcoming as they should be, I thought I’d post this, because it’s obvious the hackers have been able to obtain data from Dell. At the very least Dell support data has been compromised which makes the scam sound more convincing.
One thing I am disappointed in is that Dell hasn’t told me that my information has been compromised despite being aware of a breach since the last 7 months! As far as I know Dell hasn’t made any effort to notify their customers of the attack. But they should.