“You have a Potential Hacker’s Infection”: A Study on Technical Support Scams

Abstract

Technical support scams have become more prevalent and turned into a profitable business. We engage 10 technical support scammers from different fake support sites via a live chat and study what kinds of actions they take once we let them control our machine over a remote connection. We then provide a qualitative analysis on the main characteristics of technical support scams that have received little scientific attention until recently.