Fake Support, And Now Fake Product Support

There's a blog article I've been wanting to write for a few days, but haven't so far been able to make time for. However, Martijn Grooten drew my attention to a blog on much the same topic from our friends at Avast! and one of ESET's partners alerted me to a very relevant and related post by Brian Krebs, so I've pushed it to the top of the stack.
I first became aware of the plague of Indian companies operating PC and anti-virus support scams because one of our competitors advised me that one of them was apparently carrying out unethical marketing on ESET's behalf. (They weren't, of course, anything to do with ESET: see this blog series and this paper.)
I recently learned from my colleagues at ESET UK that cold-callers from Mumbai have developed a new twist on this cold-calling scam, calling people in the UK and apparently claiming to offer paid support in response to problems that don't exist, because, they claim, "ESET doesn''t offer free support." (Don't panic! For genuine ESET customer support, there are contact details on the web page for the ESET partner or distributor responsible for the region in which you live.)
It appears from a recent Avast! blog that Avast! customers are suffering a similar experience, 'receiving phone calls from “Avast customer service” reps who need to take control of (continue reading...)