{"id":93991,"date":"2019-02-01T06:00:22","date_gmt":"2019-02-01T14:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/securingtomorrow.mcafee.com\/?p=93991"},"modified":"2025-08-29T11:27:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-29T18:27:11","slug":"mcafee-customer-support-scam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mcafee.com\/blogs\/internet-security\/mcafee-customer-support-scam\/","title":{"rendered":"Customer Support Scams Are Popping up in Social Media Ads: How to Stay Secure"},"content":{"rendered":"

Many of us rely on customer support<\/a>\u00a0websites for navigating new technology. Whether it\u2019s installing a new piece of software or troubleshooting a computer program, we look to customer support to save the day. Unfortunately, cybercriminals are leveraging our reliance on customer support pages to access our personal information for financial gain. It appears that a malicious website is attempting to trick users into handing over their McAfee activation keys and personally identifiable information (PII) data by disguising themselves as the official McAfee customer support website.<\/p>\n

So how exactly does this cyberthreat work? First, malicious actors advertise the fake website on Twitter. If a user clicks on the ad, they are presented with a \u201cDownload McAfee\u201d button. When the user clicks on the download button, they are redirected to a screen prompting them to enter their name, email address, contact number, and product activation key to proceed with the download. However, when the user clicks on the \u201cStart Download\u201d button, they are redirected to a screen stating that their download failed due to an unexpected error.<\/p>\n

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How to Defend Yourself From Scams<\/h2>\n

At this point, the site owner has received the user\u2019s personal data, which they could exploit in a variety of ways. And while this scheme may seem tricky to spot, there are a number of ways users can defend themselves from similar scams:<\/p>\n