Computers 'tech support' telephone calls - SCAM WARNING

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itsdavedotnet

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if you get a call from an indian gentleman/woman claiming to be from microsoft, it is a scam, tell them where to go stick their phone support and hang up. I've had two today alone.


orrrr if you're bored and technically inclined, have a bit of fun... :D

I definitely just had a rather long phone call with a gentleman from 'microsoft' in india who claimed that my windows xp computer had many viruses. They had a good look at my OSX desktop, a news story on this very scam, and some, uh, tasteful photos from the internet, and saw that I'd put down the logmein details as 'bill gates' before they finally cottoned on...

my crowning piece was 'no I have windows OS 10 thing, I don't know... I bought it from the windows shop, pc world, so it's a windows, right?'
 
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My mate has had 3 calls so far and has enjoyed spending 20 mins on the phone playing the thickie (even though he designs Drupal pages). The company names so far are sparksupport.com, comantra & 365helpdesk.co.uk who all claimed to have their worldwide internet monitoring servers based in Manchester and noticed my mates' problem.

How very kind of them :D
 
sad to see they are still pulling this scam.
 
it was http://www.gtechsupport.net/ for me yesterday. Fortunately they use just a normal logmein rescue client (they told me to go to logmein123.com, which is a genuine logmein site), so up til the point that they actually try and install a virus on your pc, it's pretty safe :D
 
I am curious as to what they may get out of the scam?
Also, surley, no one falls for this type of scam these days, do they? :shrug:
 
wontolla said:
I am curious as to what they may get out of the scam?
Also, surley, no one falls for this type of scam these days, do they? :shrug:
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I believe they request you install a couple of files so that they can 'rectify' the 'problems' your machine is experiencing.

The file is a keylogger or something similar than then harvests your passwords etc. for online banking and such like.
 
I work in tech support and hear about this regularly. It's a well known thing and they also claim to be from a company called windows click, support on click, etc. I can't find their website, but here's a whole Google page about it:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=support+on+click&aq=f&aqi=g10&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=

The way the scam works is really simple. They cold call you, telling you that they are from Microsoft or any of the companies named above. They'll tell you that your computer is at risk and will ask you to go to eventviewer and take note of the errors. This is where it gets clever; the event viewer almost always has errors or warnings of some kind, but it is usually enough to make non-tech savvy people worried, and that's where the psychological trickery comes in. If the scammers got lucky, the person they called now trusts them and shortly after the scammers ask for credit card details for a small fee - usually around £40 - for them to 'fix' the machine. What happens next is probably fairly obvious... it involves a remote support session and 'fixing' of the machine. As someone has already mentioned I believe it involves installing some spyware, as well as attempting to empty the person's bank account shortly afterwards.

Tell everyone you know about this as no-one seems to be able to stop them, and it's been going on for around 2 years, as far as I know.



wontolla said:
I am curious as to what they may get out of the scam?
Also, surley, no one falls for this type of scam these days, do they? :shrug:
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I'm guessing you don't work in Tech support Barry ;) You'd be surprised just what people do fall for when it comes to computers; for some reason all logic and common sense seems to go out the window.

For what it's worth, I managed to get a number for these scammers - the one I got was Bradford based - and I phoned them up. I spoke to an American gentleman named Austin and asked why they were scamming people... he claimed it wasn't a scam because people agreed to it, and the fact that they 'willingly' paid for the service made it totally legal... sad sad sad :(
 
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Dont worry it is only Mujibar.

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trencheel303 said:
For what it's worth, I managed to get a number for these scammers - the one I got was Bradford based - and I phoned them up. I spoke to an American gentleman named Austin and asked why they were scamming people... he claimed it wasn't a scam because people agreed to it, and the fact that they 'willingly' paid for the service made it totally legal... sad sad sad :(
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u8myufo said:
Dont worry it is only Mujibar.

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Yup .... That's Bradford!
 
:lol: :lol: we had one a few weeks ago [2nd or 3rd iirc].... Yves geza answered the call, as yours truly was up a ladder knocking nails into a piece of plasterboard doing a patch repair. So chap tells him he must start his machine, he has loads of viruses, all the usual spiel - I quickly picked up on what was going on from our side of the conversation so YG does this whole act about 'it wont start, it must be really bad....hang on I will try hitting it with a hammer...[BANG BANG BANG FROM ME] oh no, it still wont start, it must have loads of viruses...' - meanwhile I am almost falling off the ladder in tears of laughter and the guy on the other end is getting really paniced that some mad man is hitting his computer with a hammer and telling him to stop, that wont work, it needs special software dowloading. Managed to keep this one going for over 5 minutes until the heavily accented chappie hung up on us :D :thumbs:
 
Yv said:
:lol: :lol: we had one a few weeks ago [2nd or 3rd iirc].... Yves geza answered the call, as yours truly was up a ladder knocking nails into a piece of plasterboard doing a patch repair. So chap tells him he must start his machine, he has loads of viruses, all the usual spiel - I quickly picked up on what was going on from our side of the conversation so YG does this whole act about 'it wont start, it must be really bad....hang on I will try hitting it with a hammer...[BANG BANG BANG FROM ME] oh no, it still wont start, it must have loads of viruses...' - meanwhile I am almost falling off the ladder in tears of laughter and the guy on the other end is getting really paniced that some mad man is hitting his computer with a hammer and telling him to stop, that wont work, it needs special software dowloading. Managed to keep this one going for over 5 minutes until the heavily accented chappie hung up on us :D :thumbs:
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He's got you trained well. You up the ladder doing the work. Would you like to come and repaint my soffits:)?
 
Its sad to think that some people do actually fall for this sort of thing, my mum nearly fell for it once but handed the phone to me and they claimed they could see the problem on my pc. They told me over the phone to download some thing and install it to which i told them i did and talked to me for ages, the person sounded happier and happier till they said they could not find my pc on the network, i asked them if there was a problem with the comp not being plugged in and the internet not being on for about 4 hours.
She mumbled some thing then hung up on me.
Dont know why though??
 
Yv said:
....hang on I will try hitting it with a hammer...[BANG BANG BANG FROM ME] oh no, it still wont start, it must have loads of viruses...'
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Brilliant, :lol: I got a call some time ago from a Maximus - now, from his broad accent it was quite clear he was unlikely to be called Maximus! I just hung up, but I have started playing the "sound interested" game with various comapnies who have phoned me recently, one being homeserve and another being sky. Listen to their spiel, um and ah where required then when they think they have the sale ask them to send out details in the post as you don't sign up for anything over the phone.

Sky were quite reasonable and polite about it, homeserve on the other hand were not :lol: they took it so well that I got "Right!!!!, I suggest you check our website and contact us when you've eventually made up your mind!"

The great thing about homeserve is you can rest assured another caller will be back on the following week to play the game again :lol:
 
PsiFox said:
He's got you trained well. You up the ladder doing the work. Would you like to come and repaint my soffits:)?
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:suspect: It was him and plumber we once employed that put the bloody hole there in the first place....I prefer the house to be still standing after the DIY [which yes, in our house stands for Do It Yvonne! :nuts: ]
 
They're at it again - I just took a call from a customer who have been bitten by these SOBs - this time under the name of TechMyHelp.com. Surprise surprise the gentlemen he spoke to was called Aaron Austin, just like I thought, although it will undoubtedly be a fake name.

Mods, is there any chance we could have this stickied please?
 
trencheel303 said:
They're at it again - I just took a call from a customer who have been bitten by these SOBs - this time under the name of TechMyHelp.com. Surprise surprise the gentlemen he spoke to was called Aaron Austin, just like I thought, although it will undoubtedly be a fake name.

Mods, is there any chance we could have this stickied please?
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When I was working in IT (server end thank god, never touched the pebkacs...), dell's pro server support, when ireland are busy, you get put through to a nice (and knowledgeable) guy from india, called Ebenezer :D
 
Yv said:
:suspect: It was him and plumber we once employed that put the bloody hole there in the first place....I prefer the house to be still standing after the DIY [which yes, in our house stands for Do It Yvonne! :nuts: ]
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That sounds alarmingly similar to what I end up doing. Which is why I'm not allowed proper tools any more...the more sensible and better half does the DIY while rolling her eyes at me.
 
trencheel303 said:
They're at it again - I just took a call from a customer who have been bitten by these SOBs - this time under the name of TechMyHelp.com. Surprise surprise the gentlemen he spoke to was called Aaron Austin, just like I thought, although it will undoubtedly be a fake name.

Mods, is there any chance we could have this stickied please?
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On the basis this IS a current scam I have stickied it for now and changed the title so its clear.
 
I had another one yesterday - told him I couldn't see any errors whatsoever in my event log, so he got me to go to the temp folder, and apparently the presence of files there indicates that I have 'corrupted programs'

Once he'd seen OSX, I called him out on it all, said that temp files are just normal files used by internet browsers, and I hung up.

Unbelievably, he called me back to argue the toss! I mentioned that I (in reality, used to be) a system administrator for 300 windows servers, and that it is completely normal to have files in %temp%... "no sir well how do you know that, you are wrong".

speechless.

Seeing as I'd dropped the idiot act ('but my computer came from pc world, which means its a pc not a mac, right?'), I confirmed that yes, indeed, he had seen a mac when he'd remoted in... at which point, after everything, after I'd called him a scammer, that everything was bogus...

"well sir thank you for your time are there any windows computer users in your house that need windows support for their computer, if so can you pass me over..."

speechless again. some people never give up. *click*
 
I had them call (I was bored so I played along)and ask me to open the event viewer and because there was (of course) lots of events it meant I had (cue the keywords) lots of VIRUSES and SPYWARE which was slowing my computer down. These people were from my "windows service provider" whatever that is. After telling them I was bored with the conversation and hanging up they phoned me back. The most annoying thing is when I get these over dinner time! That makes me really mad and I shout out them.
 
Yep... same old deception tactics, and apparently they can become quite rude towards you if you tell them to go away.
 
I haven't had any more recently... maybe they've realised that I'll just waste their time... :D
 
I had two the other day. The first time the call went like this:

Hello sir your computer is downloading viruses
Oh, really, which computer
The one you use the most
which one is that?
The one in your room
What operating system is on that computer?
Windows
No, it's not, You're talking b*llox
Excuse me?
I said "YOU"RE TALKING B*LLOX NOW ***** OFF!!!"

the second time was funnier, it involved me having a conversation with them whilst using my Alan Partridge quotes app from my iphone. The best of which was "I love you, in a way"
 
The best thing to do is not to hang up.

This should mean that they will be unable to dial out again because the line is still open to you .... :D
 
hypnotic said:
The best thing to do is not to hang up.

This should mean that they will be unable to dial out again because the line is still open to you .... :D
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Sadly not.

When they terminate the call for them it is over and they can dial out again.
 
Best thing to do is cry a lot, ask them for their bank details so you can wire the money to them and for a phone number so you can call them back.
 
Well, word must be getting round my town - they've made it into our local rag! Just a wee paragraph at the corner of one of the opening pages right enough, but it's still something.
 
Some more info courtesy of gramps:

gramps said:
Some of you may be aware of this already, I was but had a reminder when I received the call this afternoon - Indian guy calling himself 'Dean Howard' says his company is representing Microsoft and he has received reports from my ISP that I have major virus problems on my PC.

The scam details are thus:-

"Apparently the latest scam to hit the UK comes down your phone line from someone who is pretending to be from Microsoft in a bid to dupe people out of their cash for saving their computer from suffering a fate worse than death.

According to an article over on Techeye, a report over on The Guardian reports the scam is simple, you get a call from someone with an Indian accent asks for the householder and tells them “I’m calling from Microsoft.”

The scammer then goes on to say they’ve received reports from their ISP of “serious virus problems” from the householders PC then goes on to predict the end of life as we know it if the problem isn’t solved. Then the householder is asked to open the program “Windows Event Viewer” which shows an abundance of errors which falsely gets the user to trust the fake caller.

Naturally the Microsoft fake then directs the user to a website to download a program which will allow the caller to remotely take control of the PC and supposedly fix all the problems after which the caller requires the user to hand over £185 for subscription to the supposed “preventative service.”

According to the Guardian article this scam has been running since 2008, but has worsened after being run out of call centres based in Kolkata. On a final note if you receive a phone call from someone claiming to be from Microsoft, don’t fall for it because Microsoft never calls anyone. "



Just a heads-up for those who might otherwise be unaware.
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Still going on just had a call myself, told them I run a Mac soon shut him up.
 
oh, we had a new one over the weekend, not really a scam as above, more sales, but funny none the less. A heavily accented chap called, HTMBO answered the phone, but the chap was looking for white gold images as he wanted to offer us a cracking deal on a website. They would even do a free demo so we could see what the site would look like before we paid the £299, but said they couldn't load it to their own website as that would close it down! Seriously! Yves geza kept him talking for a while, really leading him up the garden path. The chap then said there would be a small fee of £15 to buy the domain names .co.uk and .com - it was explained to him that we could sell them to him, but it would cost considerably more than that :lol: Yves Geza took the fella so far off his script he was at a total loss as to what to do, but at least it must have cost them a good few pence in the cost of the call!
 
It appears that these *******s are at it again...

www.windowssupportgroup.com

Had a gentleman receive a call from them with exactly the same BS, windows errors in event log bla bla, redirected to the above website. The above site may be completely innocent, but it reeks of scam to me, especially the three paragraphs at the bottom. The phone number is probably fake too.
 
trencheel303 said:
It appears that these *******s are at it again...

www.windowssupportgroup.com

Had a gentleman receive a call from them with exactly the same BS, windows errors in event log bla bla, redirected to the above website. The above site may be completely innocent, but it reeks of scam to me, especially the three paragraphs at the bottom. The phone number is probably fake too.
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No professional service would have a site like that and the whois, although 'private' gives a distinct clue:-

Domain Name: WINDOWSSUPPORTGROUP.COM
Registrar: DIRECTI INTERNET SOLUTIONS PVT. LTD. D/B/A PUBLICDOMAINREGISTRY.COM
Whois Server: whois.PublicDomainRegistry.com
Referral URL: http://www.PublicDomainRegistry.com
Name Server: NS1.WEB4AFRICA.COM
Name Server: NS2.WEB4AFRICA.COM
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You did well to warn him off.
 
I didn't even bother doing a whois because the site stank of scam straightaway, and it was very late in the day. I trusted my judgement ;)
 
had another call yesterday from them, had a good laugh again, kept playing terry tibbs from my iphone to him. "Talk to me"
 
joescrivens said:
had another call yesterday from them, had a good laugh again, kept playing terry tibbs from my iphone to him. "Talk to me"
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I'm intrigued to know why they like you so much. Isn't that the third time?
 
fourth actually, each time they have a different company name.

The first time I just told them to F off because I was in a mood
Second is the call I recorded on here
Third I couldn't get them to bite because I didn't have a windows machine
Fourth I pretended it was windows I had and I became Terry Tibbs
 
They rang my mum and dad today (who live in Australia). Mum believed them but fortunately handed them over to dad, who thought it might be a scam and checked with a friend. They are elderly and it is vulnerable people like them that get conned.I have told them to always assume things are a scam or check with me.
 
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