'Virus' scammers leave couple at risk

Clint Venables knew what to do when a woman with an Indian accent phoned his Whangarei home on Monday evening, told him she was from Microsoft and said there was a virus in his computer.
The Tikipunga drainlayer is not too savvy in cyberspace so he turned the call over to his wife Heather, who handles all the high-tech business in their home.
The couple didn't know it, but they were about to become the latest victims of fraudsters who have tried to scam tens of thousands of New Zealand computer owners in the past year.
The persuasive caller soon had access to the couple's computer and Mrs Venables' credit card number, using it to extract $78 from her bank account for allegedly installing several anti-virus programmes.
The Venables received an email invoice for the programmes, issued by the Greybytes Cybertech company of India and containing two telephone numbers, one in Britain and the other in Auckland.
It all seemed genuine, so they slept soundly, believing a nasty virus had been flushed from their computer.
They didn't worry until next morning when Mr Venables took his cellphone to get some attention from a city electronics firm.
An employee warned him the Indian company could be chewing into supposedly secure memory banks in the couple's computer - and cleaning out their money.
Mr Venables closed the couple's credit card account and immediately shut down their internet banking facility.
The electronics firm told him Greybytes had erased the history of its presence on his computer. The firm had also tried calling the Greybytes number in Auckland, but got only a recording asking to leave a message.
When the Advocate called the number an Indian man who answered the phone said the firm had offices in Queen St. He then said he would call back in 10 minutes, but did not ring. Later calls to the number went unanswered. Greybytes has a website offering international computer services but little information about the company and no contact phone numbers.
Ministry of Consumer Affairs official Alastair Stewart, of Wellington, said that since October last year tens of thousands of people in New Zealand had received telephone calls similar to the one received by the Venables.
"Our advice is to hang up immediately if someone rings and says your computer has a virus," he said.