Beware of scammers in the online community

[rhowe1]

     I nearly got sucked into spending a couple of thousand bucks today after spending an hour online with someone posing as a QB tech support person.  I had called an 800 number listed on a response to a question I submitted to the community and reached what I thought was QB support.  They tried to convince me that my company files were corrupted.  As evidence, they pointed to the fact that the QBB file was smaller than the QBW file, telling me that not all of my data was being backed up.

     So, be especially aware of community responses from scammers posing as QB support.

[EmilyCowan]

Hey @rhowe1 - thanks for this post and for offering a heads-up to the wider community. We do our best to catch these spammers as soon as they appear, but every once in a while one manages to sneak past our filters. 

If you do see an 800 number being offered as QB support - or any other "phishy" behavior - please report it to us immediately. We NEVER post telephone numbers here, so that especially is a dead giveaway. Here are the instructions for filing an abuse report:

1) Click on the 3 vertical dots next to the offending question or comment/answer. 

2) Select the option to "Report Inappropriate Content" and it will pop up a new window that lets you write in why you are calling our attention to a post.  

When you use this, all the moderators receive a Private Message notification and we can review the post and handle it appropriately.   

 

[rhowe1]

Emily, I have attached a screenshot of one of the two email messages I received, informing me that I had received answers to my question (This page doesn't seem to want me to attach a second item).  When I clicked the link at the bottom of each and was taken to the community forum, a message appeared at the top that read, "Sorry, this reply has been archived or deleted."  So I called the phone number 833 802 000 and was connected to a man with an South Asian accent who identified himself as Manaan Beig.  He gave me a callback number of [removed] x 1155.  He assigned me a case number of 513-870-241. 

The other message contained the phone number [removed].  I also called that number and I'm pretty sure it was the same outfit.

Feel free to use this information as you see fit.  If you like, perhaps I can get them to send me an email with the service options I was offered that ranged in price from $1795 to $3500.

Bob Howe

[removed]

[EmilyCowan]

Thanks for your help on this, @rhowe1!

[ITProCC]

I received a similar one today.   I received an email in response to a question on the community page.

1. I received an email that was formatted similar to the QB community emails; however, it was odd that the 800 number was spelled out using numbers and letters with spaces

2. The message sent was not related to the post like all other comments -- so there is not an ablity to report the post.

3.  They wanted to connect via logmein123 with what appeared to be a QB support ID.   Thankfully my firewall blocked the connection. I never got to price, but I suspect that was coming next. 

Be aware of emails that reflect text that is not shown in the community.

[EmilyCowan]

Thanks for this, @ITProCC - I'll send it straight to our Security team.

[1740]

I got a call from an 888 number and was told it was time to renew my subscription and I could not use my AMEX card.  They said I had to use a VISA or Mastercard.  I refused to cooperate for a number of reasons... the heavy accent being one of them.  I was told I had to pay $589 and when I balked they were going to make me a deal for $439 and I still refused.  I started playing around with them at this point and they directed me to a website that had NOTHING to do Intuit or Quickbooks.  They sent me a one time code to enter and asked for me to enter that number.  Obviously they were trying to gain access to my computer.  A week has gone by and the contact number for them is still good.  The number was [removed] ext 455 Mike Dawson.  These people also had some info that they obtained from somewhere making me think Intuit or Quickbooks has been hacked.

OI hope this us not the way Quickbooks operates.  

Tom Kidd