Pennsylvania State Police are warning residents about a computer scam that tricks victims into sending bitcoin or other cryptocurrency to scammers posing as Microsoft support personnel.<\/p>\n
Most recently, the fraudsters attempted to steal $10,000 from a 79-year-old Dunmore woman, Dunmore state police said in a release.<\/p>\n
The \u201cMicrosoft Support Bitcoin Scam,\u201d as it is known, presents users with a pop-up message on a computer or cellphone.<\/p>\n
The message claims to be from Microsoft Security and warns that a device has been compromised due to viruses or suspicious activity. It instructs the victim to call a toll-free number immediately for support.<\/p>\n
Upon calling the number, the victim speaks with an individual who pretends to be a Microsoft technician. They tell the victim their computer was severely compromised and to secure it they need to pay a fee in bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency.<\/p>\n
The scammers provide step-by-step instructions to either purchase bitcoin or transfer it to a specific online wallet address. The scammers use high-pressure tactics, including threats that the victim\u2019s device or personal data would be deleted or shared if they don\u2019t act immediately.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf it feels urgent, threatening, or confusing \u2014 it\u2019s likely a scam. Take a breath, verify the source, and never pay with cryptocurrency to resolve a computer issue,\u201d state police concluded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pennsylvania State Police are warning residents about a computer scam that tricks victims into sending bitcoin or other…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":184832,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[202,2136,201,182,139,28,178,180,179],"class_list":["post-215768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-crime-and-public-safety","tag-dunmore","tag-lackawanna-county","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-pennsylvania","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215768"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215768\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/184832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}