If you receive an unsolicited telephone call from someone wishing to discuss the performance or security of your computer, it is a scam. Do not divulge any personal details, and do not download anything to your computer.

Mods: please make this sticky

We need to get jra to sticky this. It is becoming commonplace here.

Why make it a "sticky"? It is just one of many scams doing the rounds.

Because this one results in more puzzled questions here than any other.

I do not think that that is a good enough reason. By highlighting this as a "sticky" it may lead folk to think that this practice is the only one about which they ought to be wary.

But, hey, let the Moderators decide.

EDIT: And I doubt very much that the Moderators trawl all the DS threads looking for messages directed at them.

Do what I do.

Any unsolicited calls of this nature gets the referee's whistle treatment. Sound interested, ask them to hold on a second then give 'em a 5 second blast. Doesn't half make you feel good afterwards.

i want to be called now just so i can do this.. god damn you scammers call me!!

Does that mean there should be no stickies? Or should every potential problem become a sticky? If so, we'd have a board full of stickies.

Besides, the kind of people who should read stickies are usually the kind of people who don't.

I read the following on my ISP's forum, sounds similar, I've copied and pasted the content;

I got a phone call from someone with a heavy Indian accent. He told me that my PC had been sending out spam emails and he could help me get rid of the trojans on my PC. I played along. He first got me to run eventvwr, which shows system events, and tried to tell me every system hang recorded was due to the trojans. Hmm. Next he told me to go to a website. This is a remote access site, so if I had pressed the button he wanted me to, would have opened up my PC to remote control - they'd have been in and able to copy/download/install anything they liked. At this point I told them what I thought and put the phone down.
I rang KC to tell them what was going on. The person I spoke to wasn't particularly interested, said it had been going on for a while and told me to ring the police. I asked if they could send out an e-mail to karoo customers to warn them but was told they couldn't! There is nothing on the KC site. This is complacent and negligent. I would like to know why KC has chosen to do NOTHING (sorry to shout) to keep its customers informed about something they admitted they'd been aware of for some time. I'm no internet novice and this was the first I'd heard of this kind of scam. Some people are going to get badly burnt.

I'm working on it.

I'm wondering if they could have a sticky for Scams in general?

There have been a few threads about the 'You could have £3750' text scam as well as the 'Trojans on your computer' scam among the many.

Never had any of these scam calls but i have sales calls blocked by my telephone provider perhaps that is why maybe people should give that a go it may help.

Well just include these scams in this thread.

My Mum fell foul of the "I'm from Microsoft and I see that there are lots of viruses on your computer"... phone call.

Being 65, she went along with everything they said, including paying for their services and letting them install something remotely on to her pc... (Basically a derivitive of gotomypc, web based access)..

It all had a happy ending, as the credit card company blocked any transactions and I was able to remove the software from her pc. But it does happen and a lot of people are fooled by it.

We could have a forum section decaited to scams lol would be full in no time haha

My number is on the TPS list but foreign callers are not bound by this.

Funny i don't get any.

A useful fairly recent thread on the subject.

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/s....php?t=1400982

However, please add responses here, rather than on the linked thread, as this one is pinned.

Exactly the same thing happened to me in January, I did exactly the same and strung him along until he tried to get me to connect via a remote access site.

I'm so glad this was made a sticky thread. Maybe a LOT of posters/lurkers will see this and won't get sucked in by these gits.

Just had one of these calls yesterday. He said I had a problem with my computer and he was from technical something or other. How come he knows my name?

Being 65 I said, "In that case I'll say goodbye".

I had one about a week ago saying my computer was infected with a virus and he could help me remove it.

I was already aware of this scam so asked questions like "how do you know it is infected?", and then "what IP address do you have my computer logged as?", he became somewhat evasive, and when I asked why I should trust him, a total stranger calling me, rather than the security software which I know is working properly and updating regularly, he hung up

had this call last week, overheard mystep dad on phone so told him to hang up, they rang back so i playted along until the remote access and then asked why i needed to do this and asked what exactly he was trying to achieve, he kept saying dont worry i then told him i was a pc engineer and he hung up straight away lol

Received in totaly 2 calls regarding this scam today. It isn't the first time they have called either but because they used a different technique a family member got slightly got out but fortunatley I deal with certain things in my house and new right away it was dodgy.

Guy said he was called Michael, was of indian origin and said he was calling from or on behalf of Virgin Media Broadband - as if that was the company name - When he rang back a short while ago I took the call.

Started on about Hi I'm Michael from Broadband Technical support you have a problem with your computer, said as if it was a question. I told him I didn't have a computer which threw him right off. Kept asking again and again, you don't have a computer? No I said, so he asked if we had a Laptop I said no we don't, however my relative earlier in the day had said we had one so I simply said yes we HAD one but got rid because it was faulty, after that he couldn't get off the phone quick enough.

You can never drill it into people enough, warning them of these type of scams, people think they won't get caught out and yet it's so very easy to be caught out.

Got to keep on your toes with these people!

I'm wondering if I should contact Virgin Media to inform them that these scammers are using their name again to scam people, is it worth me doing that?

Unsolicited calls from people with Indian accents ... treat with caution (though you should treat all calls from unverified people with caution if they start asking you any questions about yourself).

The referee's whistle sounds good for use with obvious scams, or failing that, there is always the put them on hold option after having attracted their interest by seeming to believe them, whilst you do something else for a few minutes therefore wasting their time (get a drink, toilet-trip, post on a forum, whatever) and when you come back if they're still there, make the same excuse and do it again .

But there's a danger shirley that the perp may decide to get even for having blasted eardrums by calling you at 3am once in a while and hanging up....