Probably on holiday in the Greek islands.

All the more reason for them to come knocking on my door.
LOL

Just got a message pop up on my test laptop (which is exposed to all manner of malware, PUPs etc. for testing purposes) instructing me to call Microsoft as I had a virus!!!!!!!!!!

The number I was instructed to phone is 08006101013.

So I did.

Best free 30 minutes entertainment for a while.

After entering that number into Google...

http://malwaretips.com/blogs/remove-...support-virus/

That's the one.

I didn't let them connect, but even if I did it wouldn't have bothered me as I was using my test machine.

I've had 6 of these calls this year to date. For the 2nd one I pretended that I was following an Asian lady's instructions and when she asked me what I could see on my monitor I said '' A video of you in a prison cell". She told me I was evil at which point I ended the call. On the 4 calls since I have used a personal 'screech' alarm. Hopefully they now have 'noise-induced' hearing loss. All the phone numbers were untraceable.

Just had an Indian gentleman phone me up, saying he was from microsoft, and as i had registered with microsoft they get sent details from my computer about any threats i have on my computer. he said i have a threat on my computer that could at any stage shut my computer down

the line was quite bad. so it was hard to hear him. he said if i typed something on my computer he coud tell me my computer serial number, which would identify him as being genuine. i said ok, so what would you like me to do?

he said press the windows flag logo ( bottom left ) and the r key.

so i asked him again who he worked for, he replied microsoft. i asked him for his direct dial number. he didnt like this, but i kept asking. and he eventually gave me a number. i asked what town he worked in, he didnt reply to that. he got a bit shirty with with me, and i reminded him that he cold called me and i was a little suspicious. he finally got fed up of my questions and hanged up

i rang the number he gave, and it was an old ladies private number.


so nothing lost there, which is good. if he had been genuine he would never have hanged up on me.

but does microsoft have such a system where they can detect threats on my computer, and then phone and let me know?

very odd phonecall

MS does not do such calls, you have to call them to get support, it wasn't MS.

There is a sticky thread at the top of this forum about this very subject

http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showthread.php?t=1435992

Basically it is a total and utter scam. Microsoft do not have any means of knowing how infested with malware your PC is and probably care even less. All this scam wants you to do is part with cash for some totally useless clean up scam or to gain access to your computer to try and harvest any personal data it can find.

I'm surprised Microsoft haven't tried to go after these scammers themselves.

I had one the other day - I called him a lying b*****d and to **** off. I hadn't time to mess about but one day I'm going to lead them down the garden path and have a bit of fun. I believe the thread referred to has some interesting anecdotes.

They could have put your number in a long list of phone numbers where people have either mucked them about or just told them where to go.

This is quite common and unfortunately caught out an elderly gentleman who I sometimes do support for. Basically they ask you open a CMD shell and ask you to get your PC license key by typing in a command. The command they tell you give is ASSOC and gives CLSID,

ZFSendToTarget=CLSID{888DCA60-FC0A-11CF-8F0F-00C04FD7D062}


People don't realise its the same value on all PC and are taken in by the scam. Fortunately my friend didn't go as far as making a payment to these guys but he installed some remote control software so I said the safest thing would be wipe and re-install the PC.

Microsoft takes on tech support scammers

Why had this been removed from a sticky ?
Answer please from a mod.

It was merged with another thread on the same topic, but perhaps the "wrong" way?

I had a really nice chat with a British Gas woman in New Delhi the other day.

I think she was bored and I couldn't get her off the line what with how nice the city is, and I ought to visit sometime, but not now because it's hot.

She was of course after money as well. Trouble is, there's a valid reason for that.

https://fbcdn-sphotos-d-aakamaihd.ne.../t31-o-8/21841

I always time waste them act as if you have no idea and go along with it, then just him them with it.

I just signed in to check this thread, because we just got a phone call from one of these scammers.

It wasn't the first time we have had one.

I got Mr. Tenna; he loves fooling around with these guys. As per usual, it was an Indian sounding gent calling, and the line was horrific. We could hear babbling male voices in the background - likely other scammers pestering other people.

If these guys really annoy you and you don't want to play around with them and have some fun, get a whistle and let the scammer have a good blast of it in his ear!

I've not had any calls for a while, I wonder if their is a "cycle" based on updated lists of names and numbers being issued to the people who make these calls.

Having a little call centre experience I now put all sales calls to my home number "through security". I ask loads and loads of personal questions, asking first names, surnames, home address, telephone numbers, all the numbers on their bank and credit cards and PIN - soon gets rid of them.

They called a lot of people round here a couple of weeks ago, me included.
Tell then that you're glad they rang because your Apple Mac has been playing up, can they fix it and they'll put the phone down instantly!

My grandfather received a call from someone claiming to be from Microsoft's I.T department. They gave him the usual speil about there may be something wrong with his computer. My dad regular scans his computer and recently upgraded the memory for faster performance.

My grandfather is usually on the ball with these scam phone calls but the Indian guy on the phone managed to convince him something might be wrong. He rang again just now while I was there and my grandad passed the phone to me. It was an Indian man speaking in broken English and the signal of the call was very poor.

They left a number on 1471 but nothing comes up with Google.

The number 1471 says: 003 254 578 458.

Has anyone seen a similar number or had calls from this number before?

I always search without the spaces, but often you don't get any informative hits.


Make sure Grandad understands never to give out any details for computers, banks, utilities, surveys, double-glazing, home insulation or whatever. He doesn't even have to talk to them. Just end the call.

Or buy him a call blocker.