There is a plausible story on the Register website this morning. “Malware-pushing scammers appear to be stepping up their use of telephone-based pitches, resulting in an increase in reports from the UK of high-pressure cold calls designed to trick people into installing rogue antivirus products and other nasties.” I say “plausible” because the reporter names names of people who have received these calls. The caller says that they can check over the phone whether your computer is infected with a virus. In fact they ask you to check for the presence of a perfectly normal, legitimate, file, and tell you it’s a virus.

If you receive one of these calls, ignore it, and don’t get into a conversation. Otherwise you could be charged up to £79 to have rogue anti-virus software installed on your PC, and then suffer the difficulty of uninstalling it.

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