Geek Squad Email Scam Explained

Geek Squad Scam claims your subscription will be renewed

Geek Squad Email Scam is a newly discovered email spam campaign designed to confuse the recipients and trick them into calling a number provided. The email contains a subject line stating “Transaction Confirmation” and its contents suggest that the user’s subscription to Geek Total Protection has been renewed “as per electronic consent” allegedly provided by the computer user. The email also falsely claims that a high amount of money, for example, $499.99 has been charged for the services. Finally, the email includes a scammer’s phone number (1+808-666-6112).

Geek Squad (Best Buy subsidiary) is a company that provides support through in-store, on-site, over the Internet via remote access, and also via telephone regarding all consumer electronics. However, this company has nothing to do with the scammers who use its name for committing fraud. Therefore, if you have received this described email, just ignore it.

Examples of Geek Squad Email Scam emails

The design of Geek Squad Email Scam campaigns is similar, and so are the messages from the criminals. Here is an example of a scam that claims the user will be charged $579.99 for a 3-year subscription. The number provided by the scammers is 1-888-695-6573.

We Are Renewing It For You
Dear Customer Your Personal Subscription With Geek Squad Will Expire Today. The Subscription Will Be Auto Renewed. Hope Your Are Happy With The Services.

Another scam claims the user will be charged $399.99 due to auto-renewal of plan for 2 years. The scammers also include a fake order summary and provide a hotline phone number – 1-888-738-8146.

Dear Customer
Thank you for choosing our services. We are reaching out to remind you that your computer Protection Annual subscription has expired and Auto-Renewed today.
We would like to thank you for the completion of the maintenance plan.

You can see screenshots of these scam emails below.

As it can be seen from these examples, the scammers are trying to replicate the design of the real Geek Squad Emails as they include the official logo and promotional banners used by the company. These emails usually claim that a certain amount of money will be deducted from the user’s bank account, which causes fear for the target and prompts them to call the phone number provided.

What may happen if you call the scammers

If the victim gets caught on the scammer’s hook and believes that the claims provided by the Geek Squad Email are real, one might try contacting the company via provided number. The victims rush to get some explanation on why they have been charged – sometimes even without checking their bank balance first.

After calling the provided number, the victim will be greeted by a scammer who will pretend to be a Geek Squad’s employee. From this point, there are many scenarios that the scammer has prepared in advance. Therefore, it can go in variety of ways. For example, the scammer might try to swindle valuable information from the victim – including full name, credit card details, social security number, and other data.

In other scenarios, if the victim insists on cancelling the subscription, they might request a cancellation fee to be paid to them.

On top of that, the scammer might create stories why the victim needs this subscription or claim that there was a problem detected on victim’s computer or home network. At this point, they may request to connect to victim’s computer remotely. They may detect an issue, pretend to fix it and require payment for applying the “fix.”

After gaining remote access to victim’s PC, the crooks may also silently install malware on the computer. If this is the case, you may want to use a robust antivirus solution to remove the malware and then download RESTORO to repair virus damage on Windows OS files. Below this scam description, we have provided instructions how to delete malware easily using Safe Mode with Networking on Windows.

Threat Summary

Name	Geek Squad Email Scam
Type	Email Scam, Phishing, Telephone Scams
Email subject line	Transaction Confirmation, Your Order Receipt From [date], Check Your Invoice, Thank You
Deceptive statement	We have renewed your subscription as per your electronic consent. This email is to inform you that an amount of $499.99 has been charged for the services.
Scammers’ email addresses	imocor@consulnetti.com
Contact phones	+1-808-666-6112, 1-888-738-8146, 1-888-695-6573 and others
Potential damage	After communicating with the scammers via email, the victim may be tricked into revealing personal information, credit card details, or credentials to remotely access one’s computer. As a consequence, the criminals might actually swindle money from your or even drop malware on your computer.
Distribution	Email spam campaigns
Removal	If you suspect that scammers dropped malware on your computer via remote desktop connection, remove it from your PC using trustworthy software. To repair virus damage on Windows OS files, consider scanning with RESTORO (secure download link).

REPAIR VIRUS DAMAGE

How to identify and avoid phishing emails

In general, scammers use phishing emails to extract sensitive information or gain remote access to victim’s computer to perform some illegal actions on it. The analysis of such emails over time showed that threat actors use similar patterns of deceptive social engineering tactics. Let us provide you with some tips on how to recognize such emails and avoid them.

1. Do not trust that the sender’s email is legitimate – it might be spoofed. If you have some concerns regarding the email you just received, but the sender’s email appears to be coming from a well-known company or a person – check if it wasn’t spoofed. Email spoofing is a technique that allows the attacker to display a different sender’s email for the recipient rather than the original one.
2. Look out for urgent calls for action or threats. Scammers try to create a false sense of urgency to trick the target into acting without thinking. They seek to force the victim to search for solution to avoid potential problems described in the email even without checking the facts or researching the credibility of the sender’s statements.
3. Check for text errors. Scammers rarely know a thing about perfect grammar. Although they try their best to compose convincing emails that also include backgrounds, images and logos, it is still easy to spot that the email wasn’t sent by a reputable company since there are some easily noticeable typographical, spelling, preposition or punctuation errors.
4. Inspect the greeting line. Most of scam emails are sent out using automatic tools that are programmed to insert the recipient’s name using the prefix part of the email address. That said, you should know that legitimate companies usually know your real first and last name and address you by your full name. For instance, if your email address is sunflower99@exampleemail.com, the scammer most likely will greet you with “Dear Sunflower99” or similar line rather than using your real name. Likewise, some scammers simply use “Dear valued customer” or “Dear Sir/Madam” when addressing potential victims.
5. Ask yourself if you have any connection with the sender of the email. For example, think whether you have ordered any products or services from the respective online store that the email sender claims you did so. If you didn’t, do not interact with the email attachments, links, and do not call numbers provided in it. If you want to investigate further, find the company’s contact information online rather than using those provided by the suspected spammer. Reach out to the company and ask if it has sent you this email.
6. Do not rush to click on links or open email attachments. Lastly, avoid interacting with URLs or files attached to the email. Phishing emails often include attachments that seem to be regular documents. Unfortunately, they may contain scripts that are used to download and run malware on victim’s computer. In general, if you are sure that the email isn’t dangerous and you want to open the attached file, make sure you do not open it directly, but save it and scan with an antivirus first.

Remove malware from your computer

In case you have had interactions via telephone with scammers and even worse, if you were tricked to provide remote desktop connection to your computer, we strongly advise that you scan your PC with a robust antivirus solution to remove malware and other threats that may have been installed by the criminals. You can find a comprehensive and free tutorial below.

OUR GEEKS RECOMMEND

Our team recommends removing malware using a professional antivirus software and then using the following tool to repair virus damage to Windows system files:

REPAIR VIRUS DAMAGE TO YOUR COMPUTER

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