Costly email scam: Customer loses data.

A new customer called and said they were having trouble with their laptop. They told me how they got an email from McAfee (anti-virus software vendor) saying they were going to be charged several hundred dollars to renew the subscription. Unfortunately for the customer, the email was a scam. These types of scams are common, typically originating from countries like India or Pakistan, as an example. The scam is that they rope you in, until you let them have access to your computer. What they will do is claim “oh, we need to remote in to your computer, so that we can remove the software.” Once they had access to the customer’s computer, they encrypted the hard drive! This rendered his data inaccessible. From what I could determine, they had enabled “Bitlocker”, which is Microsoft’s built in drive encryption feature in Microsoft Windows. To do it, it appears they installed something called “Smart Lock PC”. Without the encryption key, there is simply no way to get access to the customer’s data to recover it. The customer lost everything. To repair the laptop, I had to wipe the drive completely, and re-install Windows 11. The customer’s data is gone forever. I have included a picture of the encryption lock screen, as seen below. Basically, when you turn on the computer, it went to the Windows logon page, where you put in your password to get to your desktop. Immediately after putting in your password, this screen comes up, blocking access to your computer. With regards to the scam email itself, email addresses are easy to find on the internet. The criminals in this case use a mass email service to send the fake emails out, hoping to hook someone in. Bottom line: Do not take email claiming to be from someone at face value. If it sounds to good to be true, then it is. Mark it as spam immediately, and move on.