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Make sure it’s really tech support

Recently a hacker was sentenced to three years in federal prison for impersonating an Apple employee and scamming rappers and sports stars out of $322,000.

It wasn’t even much of an impersonation since the thief did not even have an Apple email address. Nonetheless, he managed to get sports and music stars (his area of specialization) to fork over their usernames and passwords. 

Other celebrated tech support scams include the many hacks of Quicken. Websites galore say they offer Quicken technical support. Quicken technical support is free, but many tech support sites charge big for services they may or may not render.

Tips to avoid the fakes:

* Unsolicited phone calls or email. Thieves pose as support from a company and insist they have to run diagnostic tests.

* Popup warnings. These can range from update notices (You must update Flash now!) to apparent operating system errors with a phone number.  Real computer errors do not include phone numbers. Don’t click links or call phone numbers.