Live PC Expert Scam?

You have two options. If you use Time Machine, you can restore from a date/time prior to the incident. If not,backup your data, erase the HDD and reinstall everything.

If you bank online, call the financial institution. You will have to change your passwords and maybe get new credit cards.

Also change all other passwords as well.

Good luck.

Ciao.

You need to completely wipe your hard drive, and I mean wipe it completely, then reinstall the OS. If you have a Time Machine backup from before you allowed these criminals into your computer, you can then restore it from that point.

You should have been tipped off that it was a scam by the fact that they're calling themselves "Live PC Expert." You don't have a PC, you have a Mac. Even before you Googled them or looked for people mentioning them here, that should have been the first warning sign that they were scammers. Consider this a lesson learned and tell everyone you know about them so they'll know to avoid them in the future.

Question. What cause your Safari to freeze in the first place? My wife let them into her Mac AND paid them $. Do you think they have downloaded everything from her computer? What should she do?

Marion E Pollack wrote:

Question. What cause your Safari to freeze in the first place?

Please read Phony "tech support" / "ransomware" popups and web pages.

Do you think they have downloaded everything from her computer?

It is not possible to determine that, but having deliberately granted criminals access to her Mac with privileges equal to her own, it should no longer be considered secure. Depending on exactly what happened, and pending qualified legal counsel, that Mac might be considered evidence in a criminal proceeding. If you do not wish to pursue that option, that Mac should be completely erased in accordance with the other replies to this Discussion's originator.

What should she do?

She should post her own Discussion: Writing an effective Apple Support Communities question.

Do you remember the name of the guy who you called?

I am not sure what you are asking. After our experience with PC Expert, we contacted Apple and had them help us remove everything PC Expert had added and done. We contacted Visa and told them we were going to initiate a dispute. PC Expert Accounting office called and made several offers to reduce their charge of $260 if we stopped the dispute. I did not take any offer but insisted they rescind the entire charge and go away, otherwise we would continue n official dispute. He caved and we were not charged and they went away. I am told they are not evil, but merely use this scam to get service customers; they are quite knowledgeable but their practices are suspect. No real danger that we could determine but annoying.

The LIVE PC EXPERT company was using my windows computer. Do you know any companies that could help us remove everything they added and did, for windows computers?

Jac_C wrote:

The LIVE PC EXPERT company was using my windows computer. Do you know any companies that could help us remove everything they added and did, for windows computers?

You'd need to Google that. This is an Apple computer user-to-user technical help community. I haven't used a PC in years, so I'm not qualified to tell you what to do to fix it. You'd need to find a help forum for whatever brand of computer you have or for Windows itself.