Taken from the Santa Fe New Mexican~

Re­cu­per­at­ing at home af­ter a fall down a flight of stairs and a sub­se­quent head in­jury, a friend was work­ing on his com­puter when he re­ceived a call from “Win­dows Com­puter Ser­vices.” The man, who asked that his name not be pub­lished, had re­tired from his job as an elec­tri­cian af­ter be­ing di­ag­nosed with Me­niere’s dis­ease, a chronic con­di­tion of the in­ner ear that causes ver­tigo.
Coin­ci­den­tally, he said, when he re­ceived the call, he was hav­ing a lit­tle trou­ble with his com­puter, so he pro­vided the caller with his credit card num­ber and pur­chased a $139 ser­vice agree­ment.
He also com­plied with the caller’s in­struc­tions and down­loaded soft­ware that al­lowed the caller to take con­trol of his ma­chine. But later, he re­al­ized that the caller had not fixed the prob­lem he was hav­ing with his com­puter. He then found an­other com­puter re­pair ser­vice on­line and paid an ad­di­tional $139.
By the time his wife re­turned home from work, he had spent $417.
“I was con­fused and stupid,” said the man, who had be­come the vic­tim of cy­ber­crim­i­nals. “I just hope my story helps some­one.”
Mean­while, his wife called his credit card com­pany, and work­ers there were able to can­cel the charges.
On Thurs­day, the Fed­eral Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Com­mis­sion re­leased new rules to give phone car­ri­ers more au­thor­ity to take ag­gres­sive ac­tion against these types of scams, but the rules will not go into ef­fect im­me­di­ately.
The FCC al­ready re­quires tele­mar­keters to make spe­cific dis­clo­sures and sets lim­its on the times tele­mar­keters may call and pro­hibits call­ers from con­tact­ing phone num­bers listed on a Na­tional Do Not Call Registry. But the agency still records more than 325,000 com­plaints each month about un­wanted tele­mar­ket­ing calls from tele­phone cus­tomers listed on the reg­istry.
Cy­ber­crim­i­nals have be­come in­creas­ingly shrewd, us­ing robo-call­ing soft­ware and spoofed num­bers that ap­pear to be le­git­i­mate gov­ern­ment or lo­cal num­bers, ac­cord­ing to the FCC. Thou­sands of peo­ple lose their money and per­sonal in­for­ma­tion to tele­phone scams each year.
Cur­rent tele­phone scams in­volve call­ers claim­ing a per­son owes fed­eral in­come taxes or re­port­ing that a rel­a­tive is in jail. The scam­mer usu­ally de­mands pay­ment im­me­di­ately, of­ten want­ing money sent through a wire trans­fer ser­vice or by a pre­paid card.
The scam­mer may even in­sist that a per­son keep the call a se­cret and not alert the po­lice.
The FCC rec­om­mends you sim­ply hang up on any­one ask­ing for per­sonal or fi­nan­cial in­for­ma­tion.
Mi­crosoft will never proac­tively reach out to a cus­tomer to pro­vide un­so­licited tech­ni­cal sup­port, ac­cord­ing to the com­pany’s Safety and Se­cu­rity Cen­ter. Any com­mu­ni­ca­tion the com­pany has with a cus­tomer is ini­ti­ated by the cus­tomer.
The IRS never de­mands im­me­di­ate pay­ment or makes a call about taxes owed. And the fed­eral agency will never re­quire a tax­payer to use a spe­cific pay­ment method, such as a pre­paid debit card, or ask for credit or debit card num­bers over the phone.
The Fed­eral Trade Com­mis­sion urges peo­ple to re­port any fraud­u­lent caller, even af­ter send­ing them money. They’ll want more, the agency says. To re­port a phone scam, call 877-FTC-HELP or visit ftc.gov/com­plaint.
The Fed­eral Bureau of In­ves­ti­ga­tion rec­om­mends con­tact­ing a lo­cal law en­force­ment agency or the FBI’s In­ter­net Crime Com­plaint Cen­ter, IC3.com, about phone scams.
Re­cently, the New Mex­ico Tax­a­tion and Rev­enue Depart­ment has sub­stan­tially in­creased ef­forts to com­bat iden­tity theft and tax re­fund fraud and may re­quest in writ­ing ad­di­tional doc­u­men­ta­tion to ver­ify a re­fund claim.
If you be­lieve some­one has filed a state tax re­turn on your be­half with­out your per­mis­sion, call the de­part­ment at 866-285-2996.