Tesla Posted January 24, 2014 Posted January 24, 2014 Hi all. Just interested to know, i always hear of these stories on the internet of the companies that ring up from "Microsoft" and claim there's viruses on your pc etc. Has anyone experienced this directly, if so, how did you deal with it, did you string them along out of curiosity? or do you know of anyone who has actually fallen victim to it?
Popular Post Sunnyknight Posted January 24, 2014 Popular Post Posted January 24, 2014 I just did what someone on reggedit said. I got an old laptop, Samsung r510 or something, loaded it with zip bomb and tons of viruses. Named it 'Bank details'. Then, when / if they call, let them go through the pc, taking that info and unzipping it onto their machine. Enjoy 6
Tesla Posted January 24, 2014 Author Posted January 24, 2014 haha, genius, have you actually done that then?
AMLinington Posted January 24, 2014 Posted January 24, 2014 I have received one and it turned into a nightmare that resulted in me having to have my number changed. I answered the phone and got the usual 'I'm calling from Microsoft, a computer on your network is infected'. I called him on it and told him we HAD no computers in the house (we didn't at the time as we'd only just moved in). Then he said they'd been alerted by BT our supposed line provider (Our line provider was Virgin media). I told him I wasn't falling for the scam and hung up. So he kept phoning back and getting more and more abusive. I tried to ignore the call but our answering machine picked up and he was saying foul things. He asked me horrible personal questions and said he would get people to come around my house and rape me because I was a 'dirty wh*re infidel'. It was really bad. I kept hanging up but he wouldn't terminate the call his end so the line stayed open and he kept taunting me. In the end I pulled the plug on the phone line and rang Virgin from my mobile. I was in a mess. I was going through a really bad time as it was and suffering with depression and anxiety attacks and I was in a complete mess because he wouldn't stop calling. He said he had my number and would call us whenever he felt like it - at 2am, 3am, 4am. I was on the phone to Virgin in tears so they waived the number change fee and expedited my number change - it was done by the following morning (I left the phone unplugged until the next day). So far (touch wood) I've not had any problems with the new number. Hanging up on them doesn't work and nor does ignoring them - I used to come home to 3 or 4 missed calls every day from 'Out of area' and even though I asked Virgin to block all out of area calls they said they couldn't. It was only because I happened to be in early that day that I even answered the phone. It was a horrible experience that has left me wary to answer the phone. I keep begging my partner to disconnect the landline and stop paying for it but he won't - despite the fact that we both have mobiles.
abillybob Posted January 24, 2014 Posted January 24, 2014 @AMLightfoot, I feel for you same thing happened to my mum when she was younger, people kept calling saying they we're going to rape her and they know where she lives. Only because she questioned that AOL was actually who they said they where. My dad was a police officer at the time so she was alone in the house after 4 as he was on night shifts. She was incredibly scared and then called the police. The police did contact BT and block the phone number but apparently it's only the police which can request this. Change your number or go with another provider. Failing that get the police involved!
AMLinington Posted January 24, 2014 Posted January 24, 2014 @AMLightfoot, I feel for you same thing happened to my mum when she was younger, people kept calling saying they we're going to rape her and they know where she lives. Only because she questioned that AOL was actually who they said they where. My dad was a police officer at the time so she was alone in the house after 4 as he was on night shifts. She was incredibly scared and then called the police. The police did contact BT and block the phone number but apparently it's only the police which can request this. Change your number or go with another provider. Failing that get the police involved! Yeah Virgin said the same thing. I did report it to the police but they said there was little they could do as it was an overseas number and they don't have the ability to stop them calling. Thankfully Virgin changed our number FOC and all has been well since. I feel sorry for whoever they recycle that number to though...
elsiegee40 Posted January 24, 2014 Posted January 24, 2014 Our school secretary got hounded by them I told her to tell them her line was being monitored by the police due to nuisance callers. They stopped calling
Rawns Posted January 24, 2014 Posted January 24, 2014 I had one once, listened to the usual blurb he splurted out. I just said I'm an IT professional and he immediately hung up. Always tempted to have a XP VM on standby loaded with add bars, spam, viruses etc etc and let them connect through to it. I really like @Sunnyknights idea too.
gtg93 Posted January 24, 2014 Posted January 24, 2014 I got a call from a particular one, and decided to string them along to the point of them wanting to remote in. Basically, they direct you to EventViewer, ask you to count the errors, and then say each error is a virus on your computer... To an average user, that would probably be believable. One that had him confused to start off with, was when he asked what my OS was, I told him Linux... He replied asking if that was Vista So, out of interest I then told him XP to see where he'd go with it. After 20 or so minutes, he asked me "what are you going to do about the viruses. For one off fee of £99 I can remove them." When I then told him I worked in IT he got very angry and abusive and put the phone down. I rang the company back, got put through to someone else and then had a big argument about how they're just scamming innocent people out of their cash, they denied they'd ever rang me and put the phone down again! Was good fun. I've been hoping they'd call me back since, as I want to let them get remote access... Can't remember the name of the company atm, but they had a very badly worded website offering a "free remote health check".
SovietRussia Posted January 24, 2014 Posted January 24, 2014 I got one, Spoke to my mum - Who believed them, who installed their crap on their home PC - Had to wipe that badboy. Another one, thought "Ill get my bloody own back here" Loaded up a VM, that I was reinstalling the day after anyway Installed their crappy software that locks everything out When they proceeded to tell me, I needed to pay - I informed them that I had just screen captured the entire VM and that I was just going to reinstall it Called me a "bast**rd" on the phone and hung up.
featured_spectre Posted January 24, 2014 Posted January 24, 2014 I let them do their crap on a machine which had deep freeze, was so funny saying "I'll just restart the machine, it has deep freeze so that will fix it". Got so much abuse because I led him on! lol
SovietRussia Posted January 24, 2014 Posted January 24, 2014 It is clear, from all of us working in IT we like to get our own back!
CESIL Posted January 24, 2014 Posted January 24, 2014 Quite a few of my friends and relations have had calls from these guys and fortunately they were savvy enough to contact me and ask if the calls were kosher. I have been called 4 times so far and have had great fun stringing them along and deliberately messing up their script by giving conflicting answers. On one call the (probably) Indian gentleman tried to win me over by asking what my favourite football team is. When I told him I don't follow football he got very confused as his script obviously said that all British guys love football On another occasion, once I finally persuaded the guy that I really did know my way around a computer and that I earned my living (Ha!) fixing and programming them he asked me for a job! The sick part of this scam of course is not just that they take money for doing nothing but clearing the event log, but that they know they can call the user back in a month or two and the logs will be filled with lots of new "viruses" that they can charge for "removing"...
mthomas08 Posted January 24, 2014 Posted January 24, 2014 I know two people at my previous job that had these "Microsoft" people call claiming they have detected virus's, on both cases they allowed access to remote on to their PCs. One pulled the plug after she saw her files being accessed and another one was saved by his Mrs when he started to type in his credit card details.
Garacesh Posted January 24, 2014 Posted January 24, 2014 My mother got one of these a week or so back. She's fairly IT literate so she knew what it was. She just put her husband, Ian, on the line. Ian, for the record, is a Microsoft- and Cisco-certified owner of an IT consultancy firm. They didn't like learning that, so I'm told. @AMLightfoot, I'm sorry to hear that you had to go through that.. I did telesales for a day (literally, only a day, I quit because they asked us to outright lie to customers) and some of the abusive things that I overheard my colleagues say was disgusting. It's the anonymity problem.
DMcGuigan Posted January 24, 2014 Posted January 24, 2014 I told them I used red hat.. total call length, 8 seconds. Haven't had it again ^^ They called my grandmother once though, luckily my cousin was there who works in a local school, he just took the phone, listened for a few seconds and hung up. Fortunate really as she's the kind of person who'd really panic about this, though she knows if she has issues she calls one of us and doesn't listen to anyone on the phone / popups etc.
themightymrp Posted January 24, 2014 Posted January 24, 2014 Had one work colleague who fell victim to so called "Microsoft" last October. She stupidly let them have access to her PC remotely and then gave her bank card details (OMFG!) to them for the support work which would be "£30". A day later when her bank balance was £200 lighter she realised her mistake! She then had to go through the whole process of cancelling cards, asking the bank for refunds etc etc. She got it sorted but what a PITA. And then, funnily enough, another member of staff spoke to me only yesterday about something very similar. She got called out of the blue on Wednesday night from somebody claiming they provided technical support for Virgin and TalkTalk. They needed to access her PC in order to sort some 'connection issues'. Yeah right. Anyway, she followed their instructions to give them access via TeamViewer and then after they had been doing something (no idea what) on her laptop for 10 minutes they said it was going to cost £39.99 for the work they did. At this point she cottoned on to the scam and hung up. I am now waiting for her to bring the laptop in to me so that I can give it the once over and see what backdoors/Trojans they have probably installed. Gits
sted Posted January 24, 2014 Posted January 24, 2014 i expect this to increase with xp support ending. I can see them phoning up and getting you to "upgrade" to windows 7/8 and then while they do that with a dodgy (or no) code nick all your data (or even just use some theme that makes it look like windows 7/8
AMLinington Posted January 24, 2014 Posted January 24, 2014 I tried telling them I was an IT professional, I tried telling him I didn't even HAVE a computer in the house - nothing stopped the tirade of abuse. The only way I could get it to stop was to have my number changed. I'm envious of those of you that got off so lightly.
featured_spectre Posted January 24, 2014 Posted January 24, 2014 I sent am email around work so hopefully they will pay attention to it.
Garacesh Posted January 24, 2014 Posted January 24, 2014 @AMLightfoot, the abuse wasn't because they wanted to scam you give you tech support and you were smarter than that you weren't letting the man help you. It was because he's a scumbag and wanted to upset you. Once he'd decided to give you abuse (due to aforementioned scumbaggery) the fact that you weren't even in a position to facilitate his scam was unimportant. Whilst your argument was reasonable (You can't 'tech-support' a non-existant pc) he clearly had no desire to reason with you, he just wanted to hurl abuse. In short, he was just a bitter looking to make someone - anyone - miserable. You just happened to be the person he picked (by the things you say he was saying, I assume that's because he feels as an Islamic male he's clearly superior to you) - funny, they never harass their 'equals' do they? It's no reflection against you. I'm sorry you had to go through it, but I'm glad it's over, and I hope you never have to deal with them again. 1
the_one_that_cant Posted January 24, 2014 Posted January 24, 2014 I have never been called by these so-called 'companies', but if I did, I would try and fit this in for my amusment: Windows 2000 1
Tesla Posted January 24, 2014 Author Posted January 24, 2014 hahaha, that is brilliant. Some of my family are geordies so will have to show them.
hardtailstar Posted January 24, 2014 Posted January 24, 2014 (edited) My Nan got caught by these scumbag bar stewards, luckily she managed to get her money back and a new computer out of it too! although she did buy it her self lol When ever they call my house, im always given the phone to take their calls. I always have a bit of fun with them, especially when they say my computer is affected! I have two computers and three laptops so its always a bit of fun getting them to tell me which one is affected then once they have 'worked out' which one it is, I always confuse they by putting 'buzz' words and words that don't make sense into a sentence. Usually this all works to get them to hang up! Some one should record their next call!! Edited January 24, 2014 by hardtailstar Spelling fail 1
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