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"Support" Asks You to Share Your Screen

Situation: after you post a complaint in a trading forum, a person messages you, claiming to be from your broker's support team. They offer to fix your issue quickly, and ask you to install a remote access program, or to share your screen while logged into your account.

Run through the checks. Who contacted whom? You did not contact them, and they appeared right after your complaint. Genuine support teams rarely message people privately on social media.

What do they ask for? Remote access gives control over your computer, including your trading platform, email, and banking sites. No legitimate support process requires it.

What is the pressure? Urgency, promises of immediate resolution, and a request to act now are standard tactics.

Verify independently. Do not use the contact details they supplied. Go to the broker's official website, typed manually, and find the support contact there. Ask whether that person works for them.

The correct response: decline, do not click links, and do not install anything. Report the account to the platform where they messaged you.

If you already installed software, disconnect from the internet, uninstall it, change passwords from a clean device, enable two-factor authentication, check account activity, and contact your bank if any financial details were exposed.

Also protect others: warn the forum.

Rule to write down: no one ever gets remote access to my devices or my trading credentials.

Exercise: list the official support channels for your broker, and note which you verified yourself.

Good checklist. In Hong Kong we see the same pattern on Telegram and WhatsApp: within an hour of someone posting about a stuck withdrawal, a "support agent" or "recovery specialist" messages them. The names and logos are copied from the real broker.

The rule we give new traders is simple: support never starts the conversation. Close the chat, open the broker's site by typing the address yourself, and use the contact form or phone number listed there. And if anyone already installed a remote tool, uninstall it, change passwords from a different device, and turn on two-factor authentication before doing anything else.

Many platforms have a depth of market window, and it looks like a real order book. A ladder of bids and asks with sizes, updating live. For retail traders, it's tempting to treat it like a view of the market.

It isn't a view of the market. Forex has no central order book. The window shows the broker's own aggregated book, or sometimes just a simulated one, built from the liquidity it receives and the markups it applies.

Even so, the shape of the book can say something. A book that thins out suddenly on one side suggests quotes being pulled. Large clips that sit still for minutes may be real resting interest from a provider.

Treating it as a hint about one broker's flow, and not about the whole market, keeps expectations sensible.

Is the depth window ever predictive, or does it only show what the broker wants displayed?

The timing is the first giveaway. Scammers monitor forums and social media for people posting complaints about brokers, then contact them claiming to be support. The person is frustrated and wants help, which makes them more likely to trust a quick offer. Genuine broker support teams generally respond through official channels, such as the client portal, email from the broker's domain, or a ticket system, not through private messages on social platforms. Any unsolicited contact after a public complaint should be treated with suspicion until verified through the broker's official website.

A friend of mine nearly fell for exactly this. He posted about a delayed withdrawal in a social media group, and inside twenty minutes someone with the broker's logo as a profile picture messaged him and asked him to install a screen sharing app. He stopped only because the sender's account had been created three days earlier, which he noticed by chance.

Since then I have used a simple routine. Whenever anyone contacts me first about my account, I close the chat and open the broker site from a bookmark I made when I first opened the account, then log into the client area and use the support channel there. If the contact were genuine, a ticket would exist in my portal. It never has.

I would also turn on two factor authentication on the email account itself, since a hijacked mailbox is usually what these people want next, more than the trading platform.

Remote access software is especially dangerous because it gives full control of the computer. Once installed, the scammer can see everything on the screen, access saved passwords in browsers, open banking sites, and even initiate withdrawals or transfers while the victim watches, sometimes without realising what's happening. Some scams involve the scammer claiming to fix a problem while actually moving money out. No legitimate broker requires remote access to resolve an account issue. If anyone asks for it, the conversation should end immediately, regardless of how convincing they seem. Hanging up costs nothing, while staying on the call can cost everything in the account.

The recovery steps are thorough and in the right order. Disconnecting from the internet first stops any ongoing access. Uninstalling the software removes the tool, though some malware may remain, so a security scan is also worth running. Changing passwords from a different, clean device ensures the new passwords aren't captured. Enabling two factor authentication adds protection. Checking account activity reveals whether anything was done during the session. Contacting the bank quickly can sometimes stop or reverse a fraudulent transfer, especially if it's reported within hours. Reporting the incident to the broker as well lets them flag the account and watch for unusual withdrawal requests.