Microsoft says it received 153,000 reports in 2017 from customers who’d come in contact with tech-support scammers via a cold call, spam, or the web.
The reports from customers last year were up 24 percent on 2016, with filings coming from 183 countries.
Despite being a well-known fraud, some 15 percent of Microsoft customers who reported incidents lost money. Losses were typically between $200 and $400 each.