Tech Support Firm Pressured Consumers to Pay for Unneeded Services, Alleges FTC

filed Oct. 3 in the District Court of the Eastern District of Missouri. A federal judge also issued a temporary order stopping the Missouri-based Global Access Technical Support's practices and freezing its assets. The FTC alleged the company used affiliate marketers to place pop-up ads to deceive consumers into thinking they were warnings sent by legitimate companies like Apple or Microsoft about malware infections. The ads were described as "loud alarms or recorded messages" of threats to consumers' computers and browsers, leaving users unable to close those ads or navigate around them, the release said. When consumers called a provided toll-free number they were connected to telemarketers at a call center in India who claimed they were with a major tech company, the FTC said. The telemarketers were then given remote access to consumers' computers and deceived them that technical support services were needed to fix problems, the release added. Consumers were charged $200 to $400 for services "that could take hours to complete and which were at best useless, and in some cases could actually harm consumers' computers," the FTC alleged. A message was left through one company-affiliated phone number found on a Better Business Bureau website. When another affiliated phone number was dialed a woman picked up saying the caller had the wrong number. A third number affiliated with the company didn't work.