Microsoft Telephone Scam

Xordium

Xordium

Xordium

Soldato
Joined
8 Apr 2009
Posts
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My darling mother had fallen for this. Is it best to reinstall W7 or just virus scan everything and change passwords etc. She let them have remote access and described the cursor moving around but can't remember where.

Thought there might be someone on here with a bit of knowledge about such things.

(yes I will tell her in no certain terms what a muppet she is)
 
I've never heard of them actually doing any harm.. Most of them use a Teamviewer type program and some do actually clean up your PC for you

I'd just remove any remote access software and run scans with the usual suspects..

MBAM
Spybot S&D
Nod32 online scanner
 
I got one of these cold calls the other day.

"Hello, I am from Windows security. We have detected a large amount of viruses' being sent from you computer to our servers.... etc" or similar nonsensical gibberish.

I just asked the woman on the end of the phone if she felt guilty lying to people in order to sell them software they don't need.

She hung up on me.


In hindsight, it would have been interesting to go along with the conversation to see what they were trying to do. If only I had a way of recording my land line calls, so that I could expose them.
 
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If it was Comet, and you have extended warranty - it may have been the annual health check.
 
My mum fell for this too. They modified the registry and disabled all the safety features with Hamachi, luckily I managed to stop her before she purchased anything. Did a complete format right after just to be safe.
 
get at least 2 of these a week atm, have all sorts of fun but now its just getting annoying,

great japes explaining that you cant find a start button in your osx or *nix install. seems to halt their script pretty quickly

You do have to wonder just how many people are falling for this, surely BT should be blocking these people though?
 
Delta12 said:
great japes explaining that you cant find a start button in your osx or *nix install. seems to halt their script pretty quickly
Click to expand...

Asking them to tell you the IP address of your computer is a fairly simple way to stop the conversation too.

"So, if you don't know what my IP address is, how do you know my computer has a virus?"
 
My mum has had one of these too but luckily told them that I (her son) does any installing or updating of the computer, so they never got anywhere but it could have been nasty.
 
No matter how many times I tell my mum that microsoft won't phone her up about her ages-old laptop, she tells me that she thinks it is very serious and she'll want their help when she's not busy... :rolleyes:
 
AMMUT said:
Do share. Interested to read what they said.
Click to expand...

Well they said she immediately had to purchase Norton Antivirus amongst a whole load of other scaremongering including the "well this laptop may be beyond repair and that she would need a new one."

All sorted and safe and a lesson for her - I am never that busy to sort this stuff out especially when it takes me longer in time overall.

Incidentally looking at what they did it appears the cheeky ****** tried to get her to pay £75-00 for a Microsoft Security Suite - yep you got it MSE. :eek:
 
all joking aside this is actually terrible as i imagine many people fall for it, especially older people who dont have anyone to advise them better
 
Couple of my friends receive these calls. For one, the calls are regular. Very often other family members will answer the phone and it's really ******* them off. He's considering one of those call blocker devices.

The other friend uses harsh language, yet the caller still persists after being insulted many times. :D I think he gets a kick out of it. Personally, I CBA with any of it, and would just put the phone down.

I think we've received one call from someone trying a similar thing. That was a few years ago. I'm thankful we haven't had any more since.
 
I got one of these at work the other day... i spent 15 mins on the phone houmering the guy...

I can wait till they finally phone some hackre guy who lets them in then reverses the hack and hacks them... now that would be funny..
 
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