Local residents are being warned once again by the Sheriff's Office to be on the alert for scammers.
According to the Sheriff's Office, a person or persons have been calling area residents posing as a Microsoft employee and telling them their computer system has been compromised, potentially with a virus.
The caller then attempts to guide the person through a series of steps supposedly meant to fix the problem, but may actually give the caller remote access to the computer system.
Once a malicious person has gained such access it's possible to capture passwords, steal identity or install malicious software.
Three such calls have been reported locally and the Sheriff's Office is aware of similar scams being run on residents on Niagara County.
In all reported cases, the Sheriff's Office said, residents became suspicious and terminated the call.
Any resident who has questions about potential telephone scams are encouraged to contact local law enforcement.
LOL This has been going on
LOL This has been going on for a while. We used to get these calls once a week. Often the english the person on the phone was speaking was so broken that I hung up immediately. However I was online when the call came in. I looked online while they were talking and when they finished I told them that it was impossible that my computer had a virus like they were speaking of, that Microsoft does not contact people in their homes as a policy. And that their scam is already posted on the internet so if they called again they would be hearing from my lawyer. And the proper authorites would be contacted.
They apologized and hung up, havent heard from them since.