Maine, New Hampshire, & Massachusetts Residents Warned About Microsoft Outage-Related Scam

Most of us were pretty shocked when we woke up on Friday morning to the news that a widespread Microsoft outage was causing problems worldwide.

Millions of us had to deal with issues involving the use of our bank cards, airline flights, and our Windows laptops.

While most of the problems were not much more than annoying, there were some really concerning issues caused by the outage.  For example, many places, including Massachusetts, had issues with their 911 systems.  Fortunately, it did not take long for most of these call centers to be brought back online.

According to an article on CNET.com, the outage was caused by a glitchy update from CrowdStrike.  In total, about 8.5 million Windows machines were affected.  Within a few hours of the detection of the outage, a fix had been developed and been sent out to affected computers.

By Friday afternoon, most affected computers were back online.

The rapidity of the fix, however, has not deterred scammers.

The Microsoft Outage Scammers

According to Time Magazine, scammers have started to capitalize on the outage.

Most of these scams are in the form of phishing attacks.  In these attacks, the scammers are reaching out to targets through email or text.  They are requesting your personal information in order to fix your computer,

Another version of the scam involves the target begin sent in a file that they need to open in order to fix their computer.  Instead of being a fix, the file installs malware on the computer.  This malware allows the scammers to take control of the target's computer.

How to Protect Yourself From These Scams

In this particular case, it appears that the fix went out automatically, so there should be no need to interact with anyone claiming to be a technician.

But just in case, here are some tips to help protect yourself from these types of scams:

• Rely on information from official websites.
• Take your time.  Think about whether or not the request makes sense.
• Check the links.  Does the email address or the URL look right?  Or is it sending you to some random website?
• Pay attention to syntax.  Does the way the message is written look like it was written by a person who may not have English as a first language?
• Check on our older and younger loved ones.  The elderly and Gen-Z are most likely to fall for scams.