The Real Support Numbers Cheat Sheet
This week we covered the scam that doesn't go away: remote support fraud. The fake pop-up. The fake Google ad. The "Microsoft" voice on the phone. The remote-access window. The CVS gift card aisle.
If you're new here, the full series — including Thursday's minute-by-minute walkthrough of one customer's actual ordeal — is at pcrescue.me/blog.
Most of these scams succeed because of one missing piece of information: when something genuinely goes wrong, most people don't know who to actually call. They Google "Microsoft support phone number" and the first three results are scammers. They click a pop-up because the pop-up has the only number on the screen.
The fix is to have the right number before you need it.
Your printable cheat sheet
Attached to this email is The Real Support Numbers Cheat Sheet — verified, official phone numbers and URLs for Microsoft, Apple, HP, Dell, Lenovo, Norton, McAfee, PayPal, Amazon, and the major banks. Plus the four red flags that mean "hang up immediately."
Print three copies. One for your wallet. One taped next to the computer. One in the kitchen drawer where the family knows to look. Hand a copy to anyone you know who'd answer a "Microsoft" pop-up in a panic.
A quick favor
The single most useful thing this newsletter can be is a list of real numbers when somebody's panicking at 11 p.m. with a fake virus warning on their screen. The way that gets to the people who need it is by you forwarding this email — to a parent, a neighbor, a customer of yours, anyone.
If even one person prints this and tapes it to their wall before they get hit with the next scam, the whole series was worth it.
If something just happened
If you're reading this because something already went wrong — you let someone remote in, you bought gift cards, you sent a wire — Friday's blog post walks through the recovery steps in order. Read it here.
Or, if you're local to Portland, just bring the computer in. I'd rather look at it for free than have you up at 3 a.m. wondering whether you're okay.
Coming up next week
Something heavier than usual. AI voice cloning has crossed a threshold this year — scammers are now calling parents pretending to be their kids in trouble, using cloned voices that sound exactly right. It's the most disturbing scam I've seen.
Until then: stay sharp, type the URL by hand, and hang up if anyone asks for a gift card.
— Mike PCRescue, Portland ME pcrescue.me · pcrescue@pcrescue.me
If you ever need to reach me directly — not for shop business, just because something feels wrong and you need a sanity check — hit reply on any of these emails and I'll see it.
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