Windows 10: scam but questions

Just received a phone call from someone with a thick eastern European accent stating he was from Windows 10 and that I had a problem with my computer, running slow, etc. He had my correct address. After asking me to run something that brought up the event viewer he asked me the number, which was almost 50K of new events. He then transferred me to a "senior technician", with a similar accent, who had me go to a site which would have given him remote control.

Ironically, I had just been reading about IRS scams so when he wanted to gain control of my computer the light dawned.
I've seen similar stories, except the scammers had Indian accents, thanks to the global economy.

Anyway, my question is about the large number of daily events. These are mostly warnings, with scattered errors. Seeing this certainly made me vulnerable to the scammer but does this indicate a problem or is it typical for Windows 10?
I should add the pc had crashed about daily, after installing Win10, but no longer in the past month.

Thanks for your help

:)

 

Scam question

I clicked through a link from what I thought to be a reputable organization (a national one that should have linked me to a smaller district), but suddenly a pop-up appeared and my computer started talking, saying that I had been infected by malware and
at this moment it was downloading credit cards and Facebook information. There was a logo that appeared to be Microsoft Edge in the background, a case number and a phone number. The voice warned me not to shutdown, but call the number so "the company" could
walk me through correcting the problem. Instead, I closed the window and then shut my computer down. I assume that it was a scam attempt and the district abandon the website without notifying the national office. I'll check that later. But I'm new to Edge.
It really doesn't start conversations does it.

 

Scam question

Ivonne,

It is a SCAM!!!

Do NOT give them access to your PC.

Do NOT trust unsolicited calls.

Do NOT provide any personal information.

Remove Tech Support Scam pop-up virus (Call For Support – Scam)

<<Remove Tech Support Scam Pop-up Virus (Call For Support Scam)>>


And/Or

How to remove PCTechHotline virus (Removal Guide)

<<How to remove PCTechHotline virus (Removal Guide)>>


`~`

Read the reply of
quietman7 MS MVP posted <<here>>

`~`

 

.....................is it typical for Windows 10?...................

This type of scam has been in existence for ages.
it is not a Windows 10 phenomenon.

 

Thanks. I see that. However, I would like any information on how to interpret the event viewer and it's large number of entries.

 

Windows produces a lot of "routine" event records - services starting / services stopping / etc., that can be ignored. That was true in Win7 and is true in Win10. For others, you can Google the event id and see if there is anything to worry about. But you will be doing a lot of Googling. I don't know if this is true of all people, but I get many events a day that look serious, but aren't.

Actually, it would be nice if there were a "What's this event id mean?" subforum on this forum. I would probably wear it out.

 

First of all "calling from Windows 10" should be tell tale sing that it's scam. are they using windows 10 to call you or is their company called "windows 10"? that would be strange. Any legit tech support, would never call you without your request and they shouldn't know that you having errors or slowdowns.

Event viewer can be used by experienced users to help troubleshoot some windows problems (you should have problems before troubleshooting, if it's not broken don't fix it) but mostly can be ignored by average users.
It's just scare scam "look at those red error and yellow exclamation marks" but in reality they usually mean nothing serious and are normal for even clean install.

 

Thanks for the feedback. Also good to know how the scam artists scare people.