We won’t link to these blatantly illegal sales, for obvious reasons. These are examples we’ve found or sent to us by readers, with a quick explanation of how we know it’s an illegal licence. Two of them are on Amazon or Ebay, sites that customers should be able to trust and are supposed to prevent these bogus listings. They are plainly illegal sales of Microsoft Office that might work but Microsoft can cancel the licence at any time. Real AV notices come from a program on your computer, not a browser.Here’s three more Office 2019 scams to avoid. If the ‘warning’ appears in a web browser box which is a good sign that it’s a fake. Real anti-virus warnings do NOT include a phone number to call. They want you to call a phone number so they can sell you ‘fixes’ or get access to your computer. Or use whatever anti-virus software you use instead of Defender.īeyond this particular scam, beware of bogus anti-virus warnings.

In fact, Defender should detect the scam software and block it before it was installed. Windows Defender in recent versions of Windows should identify and remove the malware.

Then immediately do a virus scan of your computer. This is the code the phone operators would give you, once you’d paid them. To remove the annoying prompt screen, go to the Sign In screen (follow the prompts) enter the ‘product key’. While that particular AV software isn’t necessary, they include a useful ‘cheat code’ to close down the scam software. Office 365 subscribers can also go to and login to see the state of their overall account.īleeping Computer has tips for removing this malware using the AV software they recommend. If there’s a problem with your licence or Office 365 subscription it will show up there. Go to File | Account (Or Help | About in much older versions of Office). Don’t do it.Ĭheck your Office licence status from one of the Office programs directly. The scam wants you to ‘Activate’ Office online or by calling a phone number. It wants you to contact a ‘support centre’ who can them sell you stuff, further infect your machine or both. It’s a variation on another common scam, the fake ‘Virus warning’ which pops up as a browser window or malware. It uses the current Microsoft Office logos and looks quite convincing – it’s a SCAM.ĭon’t call the phone number, they’ll try to sell you dubious and overpriced software and services.

Once it’s running, the malware appears ‘on top’ of your screen with a phone number to call. Here’s how to deal with it if you get caught. There’s a piece of malware about that tries to trick Microsoft Office users into ‘activating’ their Office software when there’s really no problem.

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