Why did a company take remote access of my friend's computer?

Question

Please help! My friend went on a dating site e-harmony. She has been unable to get on line. She called e-harmony and they took remote access of her computer and told her she has 6 viruses from Russia in her computer and needed to go to Cisco to get it repaired. Does this sound normal?

Answer 1

There are a number of companies that use remote access to investigate problems that a user might be having with their software or services.



A few months ago I was trying to upgrade a Windows 8.1 Pro computer to Windows 10 Pro, but on each attempt the upgrade came up with a meaningless error code and would not upgrade. I contacted Microsoft through their Windows 10 upgrade chat service. The guy in Microsoft asked me to connect to a specific support service and allow him to control my PC. I was able to watch everything he was doing and could sever the connection if I did not like what he was doing. He spent an hour helping me by changing certain settings (which I noted down) and downloading the whole 3 GB upgrade package. He left me with instructions of how to continue, but he couldn't maintain the connection as the actual upgrade reboots the PC several times. Anyway, the upgrade went through without a hitch after that.



Providing your friend called a genuine support number then their investigation into the problem could be completely legitimate. Does your friend have a good anti-virus package on the computer rather than relying on the mediocre protection provided by Security Essentials or Windows Defender?



If the computer is carrying infections, then the first step is to remove these before going any further.



She might also try using a different browser to access the site. I use different browsers for different sites as some sites work better with certain browsers. I use Firefox most of the time, then Chrome as my second choice, and all else fails I give Internet Explorer a go.



I hope this helps.

Answer 2

No this is not normal at all. She probably didn't call E-Harmony and actually called a scam company. I suggest you wipe the machine because they could have put anything on it.

Answer 3

Yes. EXCEPT allowing someone else to have remote access! That is just stupid.

Why go to Cisco? Is it a Cisco PC? You certainly need to re-build and re-install Windows.

Answer 4

Fake. They can't do that without a program