Larry is the one that received this email scam. It was to his personal gmail account from another gmail account.
The Subject is ‘Your annual Internet security maintenance’ followed by an official-looking account number. Then ‘Hi’ with a poor mail merge showing the email address instead of a name.
After thanking him for ‘entrusting the security of your computer to…’ there is an insert in the color green that says ‘Geek Squad’ as if they can insert whatever name(s) they want. It goes on to say that the annual service will automatically renew and gives a dollar amount of $389.57 USD, then says that if you weren’t aware of the renewal or are unhappy with their product, ‘we’ll give you a complete’ and then the message ends. There’s an official-looking summary of the renewal, Geek Squad, 3 years, method payment, activation date, total, and a license key. Then there are a couple of phone numbers to call.
We were wondering how this scam makes any money. After doing a little research, there are pods of people that take these calls and they are relentless about getting the person who’s calling to sign up for services and provide payment; it’s a scam. They have a pretty good conversion rate, enough that they fund the local pods, then a ‘cut’ for the boss of the pod and the hackers running the scam.
Don’t call, don’t click anything, just DELETE! If you want/need any type of security for your computer systems, give us a call and we’ll walk you through your options! – CMW