If you receive an “official” Microsoft Office flash drive in your inbox, don’t put it in your PC: it’s ransomware

You go down every day (less and less) to look for letters in the mailbox at home and find a strange package. There is inside a box containing a new, “genuine” copy of Microsoft Office Professional Plus.

The box contains all Microsoft logos and manuals, as well as flash drive which allegedly holds a popular office suite worth over 400 euros. You think they got the wrong address, but instead of returning it to the sender because it’s not yours, well, hey, you keep it for yourself, which is 400 euros for free.

You insert a flash drive into your PC.. and after a few seconds appears a message that you have a virus. The computer is locked and even if you restart it, it only shows the message… with phone number. You are officially infected with ransomware.

According to Sky News, Several people in the UK have reported this scam. At the moment there is no evidence that this is happening in other countries, but This is important to know so as not to bite in the future.

According to the testimony of the victims, when calling the phone number person pretending to be microsoft supportand control the PC with an application similar to TeamViewer.

Then turn off virus reporting and charge for services, credit card or bank account request. But in fact, he will use this data to make fraudulent payments for a large amount.

Microsoft has confirmed to Sky News that this scam is real. and that he is investigating it. Martin Pitman, a cybersecurity consultant at Atheniem, has been able to look into USB and says pirated copies of the case and the USB itself are very successful. This can be seen in the first photo of the news.

As he explains, These types of scams are very rare. because making copies of the boxes, the flash drive itself and the cost of shipping costs a lot. But if they send out a few hundred copies to random addresses, and the scam works with 3 or 4 people, it’s already profitable for them.

As with most scams, The most effective measure against fraud is common sense. If you have not ordered a copy of Microsoft Office and this product is not yours… do not install it.

And if you do that and you get a virus with a Microsoft phone number, don’t you think it’s strange that the official product has a virus? In these cases it’s always better to find yourself a Microsoft technical service, and tell them what happened to you. You will be told that this is a scam.