Does my computer have a virus?

[Okanagan]

My internet service provider, Telus, has sent me three warning e-mails within the past five days.  In each it says that someone may have used my computer to attempt access to other computers.  The e-mails instruct me to scan for viruses and malware, and if that shows nothing, to phone their tech support and make sure my wireless router is secure.  I have done all of that, as of yesterday morning, plus unplugged my computer from electricity for nearly 24 hours.  Yet this morning I got the third such message from them.

FWIW, I have not sent anyone on this site an e-mail for a month or more, so if you get an e-mail from me, beware.

[Hawks Feather]

I would be willing to bet that it is a scam, but if you really want to know CALL Telus and ask them if they have been sending you email warnings.  I had a friend that somewhat fell for this last year and it cost him a couple hundred to get rid of the problems.


Jerry

[Okanagan]

I would be willing to bet that it is a scam, but if you really want to know CALL Telus and ask them if they have been sending you email warnings.  I had a friend that somewhat fell for this last year and it cost him a couple hundred to get rid of the problems.


Jerry

This one doesn't smell like scam though I am suspicious.  I admit that I goofed in not phoning Telus by a different number than the one provided.  I am slipping, no doubt. 

Most of the time this kind of scam tells me that I have a virus and to click on a link they provide to get rid of the virus.  NEVER click on such a link.  I get a similar scam by phone call at least once a week, asking me to open my computer to the guy on the phone.  This one recommended some main brand virus protection but didn't give me any links.  I already had one of the anti-virus programs they recommended plus another for malware protection.  I used the ones I had. 

I phoned the number they gave me for Telus and recognized it as their tech support.  The only possible scam is if they had some way to intercept that call and route me to a scammer, but it all seemed legit. I admit that I was subconsciously trusting of the tech gal because she had no accent from outside of North America.  She ran me through the Telus security screen to see if I was who I claimed, then she had me do some stuff plus what she did from her end to update our wireless router and beef up security to it.
 
The computer works and so far I haven't received any more messages from Telus.  If I get another one I will phone their billing department and start there to see if this came from Telus or not.

Added:  We do NO banking or other financial activities online.  Our bank and retirement account pressure us to do our banking online and eventually they will force people to do that but we have zero financial info in our computers.  When a bank person pushes me to go online because their system can't be hacked, I smile and say that if I have nothing online, there is nothing to hack.  VISA and a bunch of major companies thought that they could not be hacked either...

All this to say that if they hacked my computer, they didn't get much other than grandkids pics, a few published articles and the ravings of an internet forum follower.

[riverboss]

I bought anti virus from best buys a few yrs ago.
It wasn't very good so after the contract time was up I didn't renew it.
I started getting emails like this and found out it was best buys behind it! After a few months it went away but I ended up having to rebut my computer some way, I can't remember what i did now but I had to do it several times.
Anyhow it finally stopped for a yr and was back! I later found out they had helped them selves to my credit card and renewed it.

Sent from my Tank Xtreme 5.0 using Tapatalk

[Hawks Feather]

"I phoned the number they gave me for Telus and recognized it as their tech support."  I would look up the number from a bill or something and not call any number given to me in an email.  I have a Twitter account and get several emails a day that I have messages or that there have been replies to my posts - just click here to go to Twitter.  I don't use that link, but log in via my Twitter bookmark and there has never been a message and only a few times have there been anything other than likes, etc.  So there is no way that I will ever trust something like that.

I did get a email from Discover Card that looked real and had a link.  I logged in to my account and sent them a message asking if they had sent anything.  Turned out that it was for a company that had signed on to offer discounts when using a Discover Card.  In our private messages using Discover Card's message system I said that I really wasn't interested in anything - ads etc., but if they ever really wanted to contact me to just send me an email that says I need to log in and check my messages AND if there was any type of 'click here' link showing that it would go directly to the trash.  They sent back that someone there should have thought better than to send that type of email in the beginning and said that they would try to use personal messages in the future for me.  I don't go to any charge card site and look for messages, but I didn't remind them of that.  I get enough spam without starting more.

Jerry

[FinsnFur]

Just an FYI that maybe you guys already know. I always check the validity of the emails by checking the links they expect me to click. You can hover over a "click here" link with absolutely no risk to your machine. And when you hover over it, Windows® will show you where it will go when you click it by popping up a small tool tip window near your cursor.
Look through your inbox for some legit emails and hover over a link or two to try it, you'll see what I mean.

[Okanagan]

Update:  just got a survey from TELUS asking how their tech person and tech support treated me. 

[Hawks Feather]

Just an FYI that maybe you guys already know. I always check the validity of the emails by checking the links they expect me to click. You can hover over a "click here" link with absolutely no risk to your machine. And when you hover over it, Windows® will show you where it will go when you click it by popping up a small tool tip window near your cursor.
Look through your inbox for some legit emails and hover over a link or two to try it, you'll see what I mean.

This works on a Mac as well.  This afternoon I received a rather official looking email from Amazon.



When I checked the return email address this is what I found: admin@so199-135.asiawhere.com.   I guess it was Amazon's Asian branch.   

Jerry

[FinsnFur]

Yah the Asian branch