A malfunctioning PC is a horrible thing to experience in the office or at home. Considering the amount of personal documents that we tend to store in our PCs these days, most people will do all it takes to get their computers working normally. But there is a situation that is more demoralizing than losing your data: getting scammed hundreds of dollars to get it back.

This doesn’t mean that computer repair is always a rip-off and that you should try to do it yourself. Handling electronic issues by yourself if you don’t have the experience is not recommended either. However, you should be wary of common online PC scams so that you can always avoid them.

Event Viewer scam

Scam technicians will call you claiming that they have detected Trojan viruses and different types of malware in your computer. If you give them a chance, they will move with speed to take control of your PC and infect it further as you watch. They will then charge you hundreds of dollars for eliminating the “threats” that they have planted and even a monthly-maintenance fee.

One of the most common online tech support scams is using the Event viewer on your Windows to scare and scam customers. For starters, you can open the Event Viewer by going to the Windows Run menu and pressing Windows Key+R and typing “eventvwr” into the resulting prompt.

Generally, Event Viewer often records all errors that are reported on your PC. The errors usually consist of limited permissions of access. However, they are not a big deal and they aren’t an indication that your PC has been infected. For people who are not familiar with Event Viewer, it may seem scary and even deceive you that there is something wrong with your PC.

What can you do?

Well, if you didn’t seek for help from a company or if a technician is willing to assist you in some capacity such as helping you remove virus for free or offering you free life-time PC repair, don’t trust them. It is probably a scam.

Creators of Windows will never call your personal number. What’s more, you cannot detect virus on a mysterious server as the scammers claim. Legitimate IT companies will also offer you step-by-step explanation of whatever they are doing, instead of committing to tasks with notifying you.

Bottom-line

Never fall for false PC diagnoses. If you are not a techie and don’t understand the difference between HDD and CD-ROM or CPU and GPU, don’t despair, that’s what Computer Repair Geeks are for. Just ask them questions and they will respond and help you accordingly.