I have received "Microsoft" calls in the past but not recently. The current campaigns seem to be for solar energy and the latest one is "charges on packaged bank accounts".

I have wondered where these callers get the numbers from and these companies came up in my searches

http://www.elitemarketingdata.co.uk/index.html
http://www.ipt-ltd.co.uk/
http://www.ukdatahouse.com/

I do not know if they sell data to indian call centres as I have no connection with any of them. The company that called today asked to speak to a relative who died 7 years ago and I sent off the TPS and MPS forms from the registrar's office at the time. The company told me they were given the number by "Ukdatahouse" who are obviously not filtering the data.

I have known so many people fall for this, including a family member of mine. Sad but true that they continue to con people time and time again

It didn't take long...

Scammers capitalise on Windows 10's popularity in latest ploy

You get an email from Microsoft, who else, that you can install W10 using the attached "installer", which is a classic ransomware. I am afraid a lot of people may actually fall for this one.

Had a call from an Indian sounding guy yesterday who said he was "calling from Talk Talk, your internet service provider", and that they needed to test my internet connection as they had identified problems. He asked if I had a laptop or a desktop, so I asked him when did they identify the problem and could he expand on what it was. He repeated that he was genuinely calling from Talk Talk, so I asked him for the number he was calling from. Said for the third time he was from Talk Talk so I said "well I'm sure you're aware of lots of scam calls concerning computers and the internet so if you are who you say you are you won't mind giving me your name and number so I can verify you". Gave me a number, 0157 686 0705, I ran it through Who Calls Me and as expected it came up as a scam number. Waited five minutes and made sure the line was clear before phoning Talk Talk and reporting it. I'd guesed it was a scam straight away but what's slightly more worrying is that in similar calls I've had in the past they just claimed to be calling from "your internet service provider", whereas this time the guy somehow seemed to know that I'm with Talk Talk.

Probably a chance coincidence. I have had several calls recently claiming to be from Talk Talk and I left them over 4 years ago. I just said "I don't wish to speak with Talk Talk" and put the phone down.

Just had another one, said his name was Gray or something, calling from a technical helpline about a computer, just hung up again

Been plagued with these calls for years now, off and on.

I've tried ignoring them, being rude to them, offensive to them but nothing seemed to have worked until the last one weeks ago.


The guy told the usual spiel about problems so I asked him what to do and what steps I should take. He started telling me each step, pausing while I "wrote them down". Finally after about 7 or 8 minutes I said to hime that there appeared to be a serious problem.

He asked if he could help and at that point I told him that I didn't own a computer.

He was, to put it bluntly, rather rude and offensive to me.

Result - no more calls- so far.


(Oh, I do own several computers with OS from XP through to Win 10, but don't tell them that!)

This must be a UK thing.
I have lived on Rhodes for over 6 years & never had such a call.

They probably don't speak Greek in India.

I've started playing mind games with them , ring about PPI & I let them speak for a bit, then say I WANT a PIZZA. make them hungry. I'll have to research popular food in india.

I like to do stuff where they remember me. I put a pretend password on phone line, one chap rang back a few weeks later and when i asked for password he said oh its you & hung up. I also offer to sell them the password.

Probably get 4 or 5 of these calls per week.. They're pathetic, but I suppose they must manage to con some people or they wouldn't still be doing this.

I feel quite neglected, never ever had one

My folks had one last week...............but that was to do with accident claims. Even the fake solar energy calls we all used to get have dried up too

Could have been this lot ..


http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/sc...er-800-6436946

brilliant

We finally had one of these calls not long ago. I was getting ready to leave so dad answered the 'phone and he told the "Microsoft" guy to get stuffed and try his tricks on someone else

Just had one, the first one in a while. He said he was calling from 'the Windows Team', so I asked him if he worked for Microsoft.

HIM: '(pause....) er yes!'

ME: 'You do?'

HIM: 'Oh yes!'

ME: 'Oh good, but before we go on, do you have a MS authorisation code?'

HIM: 'Oh yes!'

ME: 'Excellent. Could you tell me the number so I can check it in my database?'

HIM: CLICK BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP

In a way I was a bit disappointed as I was in a cheeky mood and fancied giving him a damned good tweaking. Ah well, next time.

Had another call at lunchtime from someone claiming to be from Talk Talk, sounded like the same guy who called me last time. This time as soon as he said he was calling from Talk Talk I stopped him, said I knew he wasn't and told him to get off the line, and hung up. Couple of minutes later I did 1471 which returned the number as "0".

Three hours later phone rings, I answer, Indian voices in background for a few seconds, line then goes dead with no one speaking. Do 1471 and get a result of '0' again. Hopefully it was the same guy and they recognised my voice answering and realised they weren't going to get anywhere!

Watchdog doing an article on the 'Something wrong with your computer' calls next week.

When you get one of these calls,start off by asking for their credit card number.Explain you must have payment for your time.

Item on Watchdog now. Poor woman taken in by the phone calls.

They showed the con artists using Event Viewer to trick people into believing there were lots of errors and security risks on their computer.

Then they convinced the person to download software that would let them remote control the computer.

After basically threatening them they deleted a lot of files and locked the computer.

The Event Viewer Scan has been runnning for years.
One of many examples from Microsft Answers forum:
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/p...b-32d3900154c3
I've seen one long-running thread with 9,000 posts.

Be aware that the scammers first make sure that you have administrator privileges. It is much safer to browse the Internet from a non-privileged user account and keep your adminstrator accounts for real maintenance like controlled software installs.

Got another one from the 'Microsoft' team this morning. I had just got up and was in the shower when they called so dad answered. He asked them what the weather conditions in Mumbai were like and then told them to go get stuffed and waste their efforts on someone else

Presumably it was an international call then. I never pick up international calls.