Tech support

An email or text says your antivirus, "protection plan," or Geek Squad membership is auto-renewing for hundreds of dollars — and gives you a number to call. There is no real charge. The phone number is the trap. Here is how the renewal-invoice lure works and the free move that stops it.

You let a "tech support" or "refund" caller control your screen, and now you are afraid of what they saw or did. Don't panic — this is recoverable, and the steps are free. Here is exactly what to do, in order, to cut them off, clean your device, and protect your accounts and money.

A page asks you to verify you are human by pressing a few keys — Windows + R, then Ctrl + V, then Enter. Those keystrokes do not prove anything. They paste and run malware you cannot see. Here is how to recognize it.

A pop-up tells you to call "Windows Support", and a calm professional answers. We take the tech-support scam call apart line by line — and mark the exact sentence where you should hang up.

When something breaks, you search for the company's help line — and a number near the top connects you to a scammer, not the company. Fraudsters buy sponsored results to plant fake support numbers. Here is how it works and how to reach the real one.

The Phantom Hacker scam runs in three phases — a fake tech-support alert, a fake bank call, then a fake government official — to convince you a hacker is in your accounts and you must move your savings to a "safe" account. It is your money, and once moved it is gone. Here is how it works and the free move that stops it.

A "refund" call gets you to log into your bank, fakes an overpayment, then pressures you to send the "extra" back. The money you see is your own. Here is how the scam works and the free move that stops it.

A scary pop-up that tells you to call a number is a tech-support scam — the warning itself is the trap. Here’s how it works, the tells, and the free move that defeats it.