Reader Warning: Not all Oranges are Orange!
We have had problems with our internet reliability for some time. We discussed this again recently with the English speaking line for Orange who reassured us that although the problem was being fixed we might experience some slowing of speed and some intermittent service.
On Friday the 17th March I was told by an Orange help desk person that he would call back Monday morning to confirm the progress made in dealing with our problem.
My wife took the call as expected and spoke to an operative with an asian accent who said that the matter could take months to sort out and we would be without a connection during that time. This sounded wrong. She would not speak to him any further, wanting to discuss this with me.
He said he would call back tomorrow, which was today, and he did.
Again he presented as an Orange employee, aware of my wife’s name etc. He said he could help with the problems we had, and together we went to my computer to see what the issues were.
After very lengthy investigations into my machine’s history logs he concluded that we had a contaminated internal network which he could fix.
I became very suspicious when he presented me with what he described as a lapsed Microsoft licence which required a 5 euro fee.
He sent through a page where I could input payment details. I refused and ended the call so I could call Orange and check the authenticity of the call.
Orange confirmed they had no record of this call. It was a scam
Worryingly the caller seemed to know I was expecting a call on Monday 20th March, so I didn’t anticipate a scam as it seemed to not be a cold call – until the paypage came up.
I have uninstalled 2 programmes the caller asked me to download, changed all important passwords, turned on my vpn and security scanned my device.
Beware!
JL
