Comments on: An unwanted favour from India

By: Scammers targeting computer users « Raleigh Laptop Repair

Scammers targeting computer users « Raleigh Laptop Repair — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 17:56:03 +0000

[...] is an interesting article regarding scammers pretending to help you fix your computer: http://countermeasures.trendmicro.eu/an-unwanted-favour-from-india/ Posted by admin | Posted in Software | Posted on [...]

By: Karen

Karen — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 02:07:10 +0000

Got my 2nd call. First time a month ago I hung up, this time went along up to the point where they would have been able to access my computer. Checked and there are a lot of complaints out there about them. I should have told them I don’t have a computer.

By: asms

asms — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 07:25:36 +0000

Have had two callers in the last week.
The first one said they were calling from Technical Support for Windows Operating System.
I said – oh, are you from Microsoft – and they hungup.
The second time (today) they said they were from Windows support. This time I decided to play with them (I had some spare time).
First they wanted me to run “inf unwanted”. I played dumb so they had to go step b step on how to run something. See the control key on your keyboard, well near that is one that looks like a flag – hold that down and press “r”. I did as I was told and when they asked how many files there were I told them (1204) and all of a sudden it was “oh my god, that’s a lot. They are going to crash your computer!”
Then they went to event viewer and tried to tell me how bad all the errors were. WHile we were there I hit clear log and told them “oh no, something just made all the files disappear – could that be a virus?” They replied with “we’ll have to put you through to a supervisor and they can connect to your computer.”
I decided at that point I’d wasted enough of my time (and 15 minutes of theirs) and said “ok, I’m going to report you now can I get your details” and they hung up on me – boo hiss!

By: Melrose

Melrose — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 05:38:33 +0000

I rec’d a call supposedly from Microsoft tech asking me if I was having my computer freeze up on me, which it was. I never heard of MS randomly making cold calls. What he wanted me to do was to change my cookie acceptance page back to default, which meant accepting third party cookies. While I had hin on the phone I had him help me fix a couple of other problems I had, which he did and it helped. I had him on the phone for a good 45 minutes and he was very helpful. I wasn’t happy about changing to my third party, so I changed that back right away. I hate having third party webpages popping up; they are so annoying and after some thought I just figured it was a scam to track my activity on line.

By: Ric Taylor

Ric Taylor — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 00:38:29 +0000

This scam is certainly getting around. I live in South Australia, and I have been called three times by these people. They also asked for me by name, and informed me that my computer was being monitored and found to be infected by “an extremely dangerous virus”. I too was directed to the Event Viewer and “shown” all the ‘error messages’ that were the cause of all my problems. Having never seen the Event Viewer before, I have to say that the ‘Technician’ sounded pretty convincing as he explained the risks I was facing if I didn’t get this problem fixed. I began to smell a rat when he suggested that he could fix everything from where he was, but that it would cost me a service fee as well as an ongoing monthly monitoring fee that I could pay by credit card. Needless to say I declined the ‘service’. Two weeks later I got a call from the first caller’s “supervisor” advising me the my computer was at risk of “imminent catastrophic failure” if I didn’t have it fixed. My answer to him was that I was not interested in his fix which caused him to become quite aggressive. I reported this incident to our State Scam Watch Authority, and they informed me that there had been a number of reports made regarding these types of calls. About thee weeks ago I received another call from these people, but before they could start up with their scare tactics again, I told them that I had reported them to the authorities as scammers and promptly hung up. I have not heard from them again, but I wouldn’t mind betting that there are a few folk out there who have been stung.

By: Carol

Carol — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 12:21:34 +0000

I received a phone call this week from someone who was difficult to understand. I told him I was busy and didn’t have time to go to my computer and to give me his phone number to call back. He said no he would call me back and asked for a time to call back. I insisted on his phone number and he hung up on me.

By: K Noble

K Noble — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 05:50:36 +0000

My strategy (assuming I have some time to kill)has been to keep stringing them along as long as I possibly can. The dumber you act, the more they seem to drool. I figure that by burning up their time, I’m protecting someone else who might fall for this, plus I’m pissing off the scammers. If we all do this, it would make it pretty unprofitable for them.

By: Bill Smith

Bill Smith — Sat, 02 Oct 2010 00:28:37 +0000

I had exactly the same experience with them word for word. I went with them up to the point where I was to click on the button to allow their technician into my computer’s knickers. But security training prevailed.

By: Neha Mistry

Neha Mistry — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 10:23:11 +0000

Well done Rik.. am going to share this with my contacts, I had a similiar experience but the caller started off asking which version of XP/Vista am i using,
Surely Microsoft doesnt require to call their customer base ? Thanks to my training at trend, i did not fall for it :)

you guys rock !! cheers
neha

By: maureen

maureen — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 17:14:52 +0000

May i say Mr. Rik Ferguson you made my day, good luck, maureen