The Common Tactic Scammers Use To Try And Fool You… The Netstat Command
Having worked on exposing scams as well as rescuing people from scams for the last number of years, I’ve noted the tactics that scammers use to get people to part with their hard earned money. One of the more popular tactics that scammers use is the nefarious use of the Netstat command. So, before I get into how scammers use this command, let me explain what this command is.
Netstat is a command that is used to troubleshoot network issues by displaying what is connecting to a computer, and what the computer is connecting to, and how it is making those connections. But the thing is that this only gives you a tiny piece of the picture. You have to run other tools to confirm or deny your suspicions related to whatever problem you have. Wireshark is an example of such a tool. If you really want to get into the weeds on the usage of this command, this Wikipedia article can help you.
If I run this command on my Mac, here’s a partial list of what I get:
Now a lot of this is traffic connected to my web browser with seven tabs open, traffic connected to having Apple Mail open, along with whatever other applications that happened to be open on my Mac when I took this screenshot, and whatever macOS happens to be talking to at that moment. For example iCloud’s back end.
In other words, this is all perfectly normal.
But a scammer will tell you that all of this is due to hackers who are on your computer at that precise moment doing evil things to you. Thus you need the scammer’s help to get rid of these hackers. I’ll cut to the chase and just tell you that they’re lying through their teeth. If it were that easy to find an actual hacker who is on your computer, nobody would get pwned by them.
The thing is, for you to see something like this, it likely means that the scammer has connected to your computer using a remote access tool so that they could execute this command. That’s really bad. Your best course of action is to instantly turn off your computer, hang up on the scammer. Then call an actual computer professional to look at the computer to see what the scammer did to it. Chances are that they’ve installed other software to allow them to access it any time they please. Which is of course really, really bad and that software needs to be removed ASAP.
In the coming weeks, I’ll be exposing other tactics that scammers use to separate you from your money. Because if you know how they work, you’ll be less likely to fall for a scam. And if there’s something that you want me to cover, please drop me a comment and let me know.
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