'Your Computer Has Been Locked' Technical Support Scam

The 'Your Computer Has Been Locked' technical support scam is a common sight for users who tend to browse shady websites associated with the distribution of pirated games/software, illicit sports streams or offering pirated movies and TV series. The tactic may often be loaded inside a new tab that will be opened automatically. The page may often be designed to look like a scary error, hence why the primary color the con artists use is red. On top of the red background, users may see several pop-ups and alerts claiming that their computers have been locked. The page may try to mimic a legitimate company like Microsoft to make the message more believable.

The goal of the 'Your Computer Has Been Locked' technical support scam is to convince the victims that their computers are in danger because of a serious malfunction or a hacking attempt. To do this, fraudulent messages may sometimes contain fake error codes like 0x80092ee9. The common thing between all variants of the 'Your Computer Has Been Locked' technical support scam is that users are always told to contact a particular phone number to have the issue resolved immediately.

As you may probably guess, the phone number seen in the 'Your Computer Has Been Locked' technical support scam does not belong to a legitimate company and, instead, it is operated by the con artists behind the scheme. Calling them will not result in anything helpful and, instead, they may try to trick you out of your money by asking you to pay for fake services and products.

You should be wary of technical support tactics while browsing random websites. This is a very profitable scheme for con artists, and you should learn how to recognize such tactics as soon as possible. Remember never to call random 'technical support' phone numbers if they are promoted via scary pop-ups in your Web browser, especially.