Beware of Online Techmate scammers!

It has come to our attention recently that an organisation calling themselves Online Techmate are calling people in the UK saying they are from your “Microsoft XP service provider” and attempting to prove over the phone that your PC has viruses.  These characters talk you through connecting your machine to them via the internet and give you a lot of chat about the fact that you should pay them money to fix your PC, which they’ll take there and then from your credit card.  The long and short of this story is that Microsoft don’t call users of their software unless you contact them first, and they have their own built in mechanisms for remote access of Windows if you need assistance.  Our advice is that users should never let anybody talk themselves into connecting to their machine if they aren’t payng them already (like Albacore!) or the user knows and implicitly trusts them!