Legit or not legit tech services found on the internet? 05032013

First one that came to mind was the company that calls and says “…we know you are having issues with your computer and we can help, Let us remote to your desktop…” The first time we heard about this it was being reported in Britain but was not common in the US, this has changed we even get the call at our office.  Often the caller identifies themselves as part of a major company Microsoft being the most common.  This one is a simple issue, if you get an unsolicited call say goodbye, even if it is coincidental that you are having issues. Use common sense.

Second, while trying to locate online help for companies like Yahoo, Google, Microsoft especially for password or email help. Most of these companies utilize email, webforms, and chat for support.  Yes they do have phone numbers but you usually get them by drilling down in the company website often after you are logged in to an account.  If you type in Yahoo Support or AOL Support etc. you will usually get ads for support companies using these keywords. One mistype for example typing Yaho help and you get a list that looks like this:

You can see that it brought up an ad block in green and Google was even smart enough to point us to what it thought we were looking for.  However, many people will choose the links in green cause they are near the top, placement is everything and Google as well as evil doers know this.  So people chose the companies that look like they are a legit support wing of the company of their primary search. We have better examples but we don’t want to unintentionally identify companies as being bad. there are good tech service companies on the internet too.  We can not give  expert advice about ho to smell out the rats but our first defense is if the company is asking for a Credit Card before you can even talk to a service desk you may want to steer clear. If the company claims to be an arm of a company and you can not find a legitimate way to link it back.  Again remember that not all companies are bad, we do phone support, onsite and in-shop so I know there are good companies too.

Third pop-ups suddenly suggesting that you computer is infected, running slow, has registry errors, etc. If the message or balloon takes you to a website to buy something you may not want to stay there. You may at this point want to run a full scan with a legit antivirus/malware tool and see if you have been infected.  This form of unsolicited help accounts for many infections with customers machines.

Have you seen any of these types of attacks add you comments to our blog.  Recently I have had customers call and ask about a company called MacroFix and the paid for a one year subscription, We advised that this may not have been wise not much information could be found about this company. In the past another company we were contacted about was iYogi, we are not endorsing this company but we do know they are legit.  We have performed service calls for iYogi as well.

Again we are asking for others to add to our list. We are looking for both good and bad. We are not looking for advertisements for these companies but we want to be able to show that it is hard to see a good company from a bad company via the internet.

Looking for a US based support group with technicians on the ground in Florida as welll as through a network of contractors the rest of the US then chek out E2 Computers in Tarpon Springs at www.end2endsupport.com.  Additionally web hosting support at www.end2enddomains.com.