new telemarketing scam

[heata]

I answered the phone today, to the classic sub-continent tele-marketers voice. She was kindly ringing from the 'windows support centre' to inform me that the pc in my house had downloaded viruses, and went on to explain the possible damage they could do.
"Oh, and which computer in my house has done this?" I ask,
She responds,"the one registered to"
and she reels of my wifes maiden name,
(backstory,we first registered the phone before we were married in Shauna's name, after 9 years we've never bothered to change it to our married name, since it trips up tellemarketers, and effectively gives us an unregistered number)

At this point I burst out laughing, she asks "why are you laughing sir?" I decide to string this along, "hmm thats no good, can you please tell me what type of computer it is? oh, and when the virus was downloaded" she responds with "why are you laughing?" I say "I'm not, please answer my question."
at this point she hangs up....

 

[Blacknav]

A close friend of mine had this call not even 2 weeks ago. He played the game with them too. One of his questions he had for them was "I have 3 computers linked to the internet, so which one has this virus?" All they could respond with was "the one you use to access the internet". Makes you wonder why these people even try, i supposed some people do fall for it though.

 

[Bosshog]

We got the call too. Problem was that they said the virus had just been detected by the support centre; yet the pc had been packed up and offline for 3 weeks. They hung up.

 

[joe2006]

I shall be buggered,

Last week the wifie called me from home to say she had a call from a woman from the Windows Support Centre who had detected a problem with our computer. She is almost as suspicious as me asked for their phone number to call back. This woman was very hard to understand apparently.

Wifie called me at work & I gave them a call. The number was legitimate so it gave the caller a little more credibility.

I could hardly understand the bloke who said he was located in Sydney & he said the were contracted to supply Windows support for Australia. He gave me the business name (which I now forget) but I later did an on-line search for the company & his number was very close to the one supplied on their site.

I said I would call him when I got back home to my computer & of course never did. If he was legit, gawd knows what he would find

 

[terryc]

Joe, it is a definite scam. with international telecomms these days, any business can rent a phone and where and have the backend anywhee else in the world.

hint, Ms doesn't give anyone the support contract.

Best story for this mob was the guy who couldn't find his start button. basically kept string them on for nearly an hours with not finding stuff, mis understanding, not working properly, etc, etc till they finally twigged.

As to is that Mr <wifes family name> - > what are you selling and vice versa.

 

[lapsed]

My old man Fell for this a month or so ago. He's Not very tech savvy. Had to cancel cards and all sorts just in-case. Also rang here wife answered. Said that she wasn't here and hung up.

Chris

 

[joe2006]

Gave them another call today on 02 80035397 & they answered the call as Global PC Solutions, located in Conneticut. I do like the 02 area code! When asked about the Sydney location, after a short pause agreed there was an office there. What a difference a week makes. Different name & accordingly different website.

Transferred to a supervisor. They seemed a little on the back foot.

Still, apparently my computer has been detected as being at high risk of infection.

I should get that looked into. Must remember to give them a call next week.

 

[sparra04]

yep we got a similar call 3 wks ago saying they were from microsoft and our comp has a virus
the only way to fix was to give them remote acess
i told her to f@@k off
our comp was due to be upgraded so to be safe we bought a new one

 

[KraftyPg]

Dammit I still haven't had these mongrels ring me back. Was about 4 months ago they first called and it was the only time the missus has actually hung up on one of these idiots instead of just palming the phone off to me. I want to talk to them and find out how to disinfect my PC.

Given that something like 70% of all computers on the net are infected by something in the first place it's fair to assume when they ring up that there is a bug, however it's fairer still to assume that by the end of the phone call there is another one on there.

 

[Dave]

Haven't had the call yet, but I admit if I couldn't be bothered answering the phone I dont.

The answering machine will get it.

 

[rokster]

Wish I could keep a straight face long enough to pull off something like this with them..

YouTube - Greatest Prank Call Ever! Murder Scene

 

[KraftyPg]

Little Becky was also good at prank calls, her calls are floating around YouTube some where.

 

[Dave]

A mate of mine is awesome at pranks.

Doesn't laugh either, really does it well.

 

[KraftyPg]

Wooohooo they finally rang back. I just got some Indian women telling me she's from Microsoft and my pc is infected. Bloody hell she was hard to understand I was having trouble following the steps she wanted me to do but we got there in the end.

I had to visit a website and click through several links, enter some details about my computer and then install some software to remove the virus/problem. The software is pretty much just a keylogger and port sniffer, malicious enough in the wrong hands but nothing a script junky with 2 years experience couldn't write.

In the end I wouldn't make the computer do what her "How to handle customers" book was telling her I should do so the bitch hung up on me. Talk about offended how dare she do that!! I hope she rings back again and tells me how to remove that bug.

 

[Dave]

Id laugh if someone hacked there site.

 

[KraftyPg]

It would probably be quite a lucrative hack because you can bet for every person that realises it's a scam there is 5-10 who don't and their information has to be stored somewhere. Although realistically it would just be easier to buy a batch of CC numbers or whatever you wanted.

 

[Dave]

Hopefully the police close these !@#$%^& down and lock em up.