Had a call from 'kevin petersen' today – heavy indian accent, thought it was a scam quite quickly. Claiming to work for 'tech on support' and said my computer had been sending automatic error reports and his engineer could fix it etc. etc. For my own sadistic pleasure (and maybe a bit of a public service) I played dumb, kept him on the line for 30 minutes, foxed him by asking if they would use a laser, if it was dangerous etc. just turning the tables as much as possible. Anyway after half an hour exactly the phone goes dead (presume auto cut off), ten seconds later he calls back, and off we go again. At this point he puts me on to his colleague, 'Henry Watson' – I tell him that's amazing as that is MY name!! Anyway after getting nowhere with me for five minutes he puts me onto the 'engineer' – his name is 'Matthew Steven' (even heavier accent) and eventually, when another half hour was almost up, he showed his true colours by saying I was the biggest mother****** in the United Kingdom, a scoundrel, and a slimeball. At which point I asked him if he could spell that for me please…..I then hung up and went back to painting my windows. Waste of time in some ways, but if everyone just says bugger off then they get on to the next poor sod and eventually someone will fall for it, pay them £12 or whatever for the privilege of having their computer 'remotely assisted' ie hijacked and scoured for information, passwords, and so on. If you can spare the time and you get a call, string 'em along and waste as much of their time as you can. More info on this scam at digitaltoast…….

I just tell them 'oh, could you hold on just a moment please, I've got something cooking', or something, then just leave the 'phone on speaker. I might put a bit of music on as well. Then pop back now and then, see if they're still there, and if they are, just say 'sorry, won't be a moment', then repeat. 25 minutes is my record so far. I totally agree with wasting their time. Bastards.

Some way of inflicting severe retribution on those firms that use pre-recorded messages would be sweet…

Shame.You should have asked him what its like to live in abject poverty without any hope for the future of his family

That should ram things home 😈

Surely a pointless question dyna-ti? I don't know what that would be like, but I can try to imagine, clearly it would be fookin' horrible! I do think you're making a bit of an assumption though. The people I spoke to are just one particular species of criminal, the world is full of criminals, from Barack Obama and all the other 'leaders' to the bag snatcher in the street.

My feeling is that the system's all wrong and the world is a hideously unfair and distorted place, and has been deliberately contrived to be so for the continuing benefit and advantage of certain nations. But that doesn't mean that if the criminal who's targeting me happens to be doing so from a poorer part of the world, I should react any differently than I would otherwise. A scam is a scam, and if they called me from the UK, or France or anywhere else I'd do the same thing. It slows them down that's all, and (maybe I'm just weird like that) I enjoy putting a spanner in the works of their nasty little schemes.

Lots of people are baffled by computers, and I'm sure some are naive enough to fall for this particular scam, as they do get you to open something called 'prefetch' which shows a very long list of errors, some of which look quite alarming if you dn't know what you're looking at (which I didn't!). So it's like they're showing you the evidence of a problem with your machine right there in front of you, then offering to fix it for you………

Anyway back to painting windows……….gotta get 'em done before I can go out on the bike 😀

I had the same scam call last week, it looks like its been running for a while, more info here:

http://www.digitaltoast.co.uk/supportonclick-systemrecure-scam

mmmm, I've had a couple of phone call, indian accent,
calling about the error with my sky box.
I don't have a sky box, may be I should play along 😈

An acme thunderer usually does the trick with telesales/scam calls 😈

RJPCSUPPORT SCAM

I recently got a call from someone called Mark from rj pc support and they said that my computer is infected with viruses and malware. I immediately hang up and called my computer technician who visited my place and said my computer is absolutely fine.. this chap Mark said he is a Microsoft employee too which i highly doubt. he was asking me to download something which my antivirus detected as virus..

I would like to ask microsoft to look into this

Had one of these calls once – agreed i might have a faulty computer, as my friend installed this thing called “linux” on it.

We were hunting for the Start button for about 3 minutes.

they got my father-in-law the other week, though he eventually cottoned on when they took remote control of his pc and started installing stuff.. I wiped it & re-installed it just to be sure they hadn’t manage to sneak anything nasty onboard (a clean re-install didn’t hurt anyways). Though I believe these ‘scams’ tend to just charge you for there time giving you tech support (legally) for the alleged problems, rather than install malware or stuff to harvest your information.

I was surprised that he’s initally fallen for it, intelligent guy with a reasonable level of computer experience (would have been using them regularly till he retired the other year), so worth mentioning this scam to any elderly relatives you have who use computers IMO. Better to be fore-armed after all.

Holy thread resurrection, etc.

Very common at the moment. “Look at your event viewer, see all those warnings? We can fix that, we just need remote access to your PC, and your credit card details.”

Yeah had a call from “Windows Support” last week, had a brief conversation with the lovely guy, but when I told him my window cleaner looked after my Windows he hung up on me.

Good job they didn’t phone me. I’m right stupid.

kevin petersen’ today – heavy indian accent

South African accent surely?

when I told him my window cleaner looked after my Windows he hung up on me

Chortle 🙂

I had this last year. Had just moved into a new place, the PC and broadband we still at the old house until the new broadband went live.
Goes through calling from Microsoft, you PC has a problem and you ISP has alerted us to this. Strung him along for a bit until the point where he wanted me to go to the PC and switch it on. I replied saying yes i’ll do that, just give me 15 minutes.
He seemed surprised when I explained that I had no PC in the house and then I got abusive with him….

Kev79 – Member

Yeah had a call from “Windows Support” last week, had a brief conversation with the lovely guy, but when I told him my window cleaner looked after my Windows he hung up on me.

LOL!

opps – double post

Hmmm spam

LOL – a spammer with a cure for scammers? Whatever next.

Oddly enough I was at home today and had one of these calls. If I’d had the time I’d have strung him along, but I told him that a Windows user might fall for his scam, but I use a Mac, I know it has no issues like he maintains and he can bu99er off, then hung up. Scumbags.

Had one of these callers last week. Told him to go forth and multiply.
Once had one of them ” had a fall, trip or accident ?” calls the other day. Normally I put the phone down straight away but this time I thought I’d have a play.
Have you had a accident in the last two years ?
I have actually, I fell down the stairs a couple of weeks ago
Was anyone else involed?
No, I was on my way to bed because I was very, very drunk
Have you had any medical attention because of your injuries?
No but my wife thinks I should because according to her I’m not right in the head. So do you think I’ve got a claim? I could sue Russian standard vodka for getting me really drunk and falling down the stairs.
If you could just give me your name and date of birth we could get the ball rolling
Certainly, my DOB is 15 – 6- 95
Err how old are you?
6

And with that she put the phone down, can’t think why. I thought I had a strong case.

Holy thread resurrection pt2. I just had a call. I took about ten mins of their time asking what the error message contained. Funny how they couldn’t give me any details. Then I started asking if what they were doing was legal, what country they were calling from etc. I was a little bored, so it passed the time nicely.

Loads of people winding up the fake tech support guys on youtube…[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuCFlR-YNdc[/video]