Yes, this is probably thanks to the local council flogging telephone directories. Ultimately, the best way I've found to stop these berks from blighting my day was to get the CPR 1200 Number Capacity Nuisance Call Blocker.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B...ilpage_o03_s00

Great little gizmo that blocks almost everything. Almost, because although it can be set to auto block calls that withhold numbers, this could mean that call from your doctor, etc, does not get through.

I no longer hear from random Indian computer 'experts' or slighty more plausible British 'Microsoft'' employees, but did recently have a professional arse call me up claiming to be from an unspecified 'government department' and offering free solar power installation. However, when I asked him to send out paperwork he said they didn't do that but would like to put a man on my doorstep! When I questioned this strange policy further, he just hung up.

Excellent idea. I have had many calls from so called windows technical department. What i do as soon as they mention the word windows i start talking about double glazing and that i dont need any more. You would be surprised at how long they stay on the phone to try and explain them selves to the caller.

I love it when they start sounding frustrated and eventually hang up.

The local news is just getting behind this story.

An adviser recommended calling the bank back, but forgot to mention about making sure the phone had been properly disconnected.

Suspended sentence handed out to someone hiring a call centre making those types of calls, and Microsoft taking legal action against a number of firms who are misusing their name. No details given where those firms are operating from or where the calls are being made to.

Story

Good. I hope Microsoft takes legal action against everyone they come across that's running these scams. The people running these scams are parasites! Hopefully the more people they take legal action against, the more it makes others think twice before starting something like this.

Agreed. But if those people making the calls change their name to "Desktop Support" or "Desktop Help" or whatever, Microsoft can't really do anything about them and I suspect the parasites wont care much if all the courts hand down is a suspended sentence.

Well done to the legal beagles at MS!

Personally I think we (The British Establishment) should put some resources into this too.

National Security means protecting our citizens from a variety of threats not just terrorism.

Thousands of vulnerable or merely un-savvy people are being conned on a daily, ongoing basis.


Why can't we lobby the Indian Government to crack down on these companies?

I suspect that the British government will only push to crackdown on things that they know is a big issue with the people of this nation.

They will have a list of things to do first .....

1; Win the next election ................


















16,048; Crackdown on scam telephone calls.






















99,999; Crackdown on unsoliced calls about PPI etc.

....... and all their usual stuff inbetween.

Let's not have Mission Creep here.

I am asking if high level lobbying can be made to the Indian Government for these particular companies.. Could take 5 minutes at next Ministerial discussions when we visit them or they visit us.

Doesn't need an Act of Parliament.

I'm fully aware that cracking down on all scams would be nigh impossible.
And companies can change scams.


Bit on BBC News about Philippines Cyber Crime Unit (anti-porn article).
At least they are doing something.

1 x 17 yr old suicide in UK due to blackmail over visiting sex sites.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-30558698

It's interetsing that the NSA and GCHQ can monitor our phone calls and emails, but nobody is able to identify scammers making 1000s of calls about PPI and fake IT support.

I suspect filtering out the odd terrorist communication is a relatively trivial matter compared with analysing every support email and call in and out of India on a daily basis

Yeah, I suppose that could happen. Naming themselves Microsoft means that more people will trust them.

The blackmailers running that sextortion blackmail really are scum. I don't think much of the people working for them either.

My 81-year-old mother received a call from a company this morning. After half an hour of nagging on the phone, she had installed "Magic Desktop for kids". This disables the windows desktop, task manager and most of the options on the ctrl-alt-delete lockscreen. Also cannot run pre-installed software eg Firefox. Ended up removing the software via W7 safe mode, the PC came back up with the conventional Windows desktop, but the registry was still messed up, ie still could not get into task manager at all. Spent an hour on Google this afternoon to work out how to reinstate "Switch user", "Lock this computer", "Start a Task Manager" and "change a password" using regedit. This desktop is free for 30 days then extorts £5 per month payment.

PC is a HP laptop running Windows 7 Home 64-bit, so does not have a Group Policy editor.

Tried ccleaner to see if it could spot any obvious registry problems, but it did not.
Ran ESET web cleaner to check for malware/spyware, said the PC was clean.
Ran Malwarebytes, also reported that the PC was now clean from malware.
Avast was active the entire time and there were no errors showing in the logs.

If anyone knows of a registry policy checker it would be appreciated.

Don't know who the caller was, they did not leave a company name, and they withheld their caller ID. Magic desktop for kids appears to be designed for under-fives.

Tadpole.
I take your mother is a silver surfer.
You should educate her on the subject of computer security.

Got the laptop stable now. Had McAfee SiteAdvisor, Web of Trust and Avast on the PC, and instructed her to stick to Firefox. All were working, and the crapware still got control. Not sure what software can protect a silver surfer against aggressive cold-calling telephone salesmen (she is already on TPS). She tells me they were on the phone to her for over 20 minutes. Sorry drifting off topic will shut up now.

Have you tried a windows system restore?

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/w...system-restore

Hardware maybe? not tried myself but lots of positives on
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B004BTVQ5...dp_o_pC_nS_ttl

Ah, that explains it, I wondered why TPS was letting these calls through. I may be in the 'upper age' bracket, but that does not indicate that I am gullible - just the opposite.
I get these calls about once a week and as soon as I hear the word 'computer' I end the call.
Another call I get is saying 'I am calling with regard to your 'send error report'. something which I never do, so knew it was yet another scam.

Liking the 'whistle response'

I don't think we can be reminded & warned often enough about these scam calls.

TPS does apply to some overseas calls. If a UK company employs an overseas call centre they must filter their call lists with the TPS list just the same as if they were calling from the UK


http://www.tpsonline.org.uk/tps/contactfaq.php

Just had a call from "Tim" at "World Wide Web server" - his indian accent was an instant giveaway. They haven't given up just yet.

"We are the company that operates the internet"

"Your computer is telling us that the Windows updates did not install and you have virus infections on your computer"

(Fake) number from 1471 was 00 1 435 765 988

One with an indian-style accent this morning from a support company called "The Windows Support Hotline" in Nepal, who were telling me that my Windows PC is constantly connecting to their server to report problems. I then told them I run Linux, not Windows, at which the company name suddenly changed to "The Linux support hotline". I dragged things out slowly as they talked me through downloading and installing Teamviewer for Linux Mint, and when asking me for the session number I chose to not give it. I asked them for their full company name so I can google it, and they insisted they were registered and approved so there was no need to be concerned. They then gave me a right earful for wasting their time. Hang on, they phoned me so why am I wasting their time? Idiots.

I had another one yesterday asking if my PC had a "windows" key, then asked me to press Winkey+R. Mint does not support that sort of combination so they thought I was out to make trouble and I hung on them.

Two scam calls in 2 days, I must be popular.

Have got TPS set, and a block on anonymous incoming calls. However telephone providers can't block international calls so the Asian scam callers still get through. I can tell something fishy is going on because of the weird caller ID being shown.

Yes, they use fake called ID rather than withheld numbers as som many people block them now. The last one I saw used a US style 00 1 number. It's still pretty obvious.

It amazes me people can be taken in by these calls.
How can these scammers know people have a problem / virus etc.
Where are these computer fixers when I do have a problem ?