We are receiving reports of a scam phone call coming into staff phone lines. The caller claims to be a IT Support company (in this case ‘MW Support’) affiliated with the University of Reading.

The caller will direct you through some instructions and then proclaim that your computer is ‘in danger’. They will then direct you to a website URL or ask for remote access to your computer.

We have provided a more detailed description of their process further down so you can recognise it.

This is not a genuine call and you should hang up if you encounter it.

The scam method:

Below are the instructions the scammers give you. Use this to recognise the scam if you receive a similar call.

  1. Turn on your computer
  2. Press: WIN + R
  3. Type: eventvwr
  4. Then click on Event Viewer (local) / Custom Views / Administrative Events
  5. The caller will claim to see many errors on your computer and say that it is ‘in danger’. These are not errors, but ‘administrative events’, normal tasks carried out by your computer.
    The caller will then say they “will take you to the secure server to help me out”.
    You will be asked to open web browser and visit a URL (containing ‘teamviewer’) and download the software, after that they will ask for username and password.