10 ms·

“I am calling you from Windows”: A tech support scammer

242 points by chinmoy 14y ago

jiggy2011 14y ago
I've had these calls too, now and again but never had the patience to keep them on the line. So , they want to install some kind of remote admin software on your PC? I'm going to assume it is something based on VNC or RDP. In that case if you really wanted to troll them it might be fun to figure out which protocol it was using and implement a custom server that you can run when they call you. Any fun ideas as to what that could do?
- furyg3 14y ago
  It seems to me that the best idea would be for credit card companies to issue "Fraud" cc numbers to certain groups of people. Once a few these are processed, that merchant account can be shut down... it's a fraud.
  - jiggy2011 14y ago
    Good idea, but I assume whatever merchant they are using is getting charge backs all the time so they probably know who they are. That's assuming they are even using a legit merchant account as opposed to just stealing numbers which are exploited in some other way.
    - ConstantineXVI 14y ago
      Just yesterday I ran into someone's computer hit with a variant on this scam[0], which was demanding you buy them a prepaid debit card to pay off the ransom. Seems nearly impossible to trace back to the extortionist if they're careful about spending them. [0] http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2012/august/new-internet-scam http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2012/august/new-internet-sca...
  - bradleyland 14y ago
    You needn't issue any special CC numbers. "Follow the money" is standard fraud investigation practice, and a defrauded consumer's CC will do just fine. Tracing the transactions back to the processor and merchant account is doable, but it's often a temporary solution. How do you stop them from simply opening another? When someone establishes a merchant account, they often do so as a corporation. Corporation blacklisted? Start another one. The requirements for opening a merchant account are similar to a standard credit check. If you have no credit history, your terms will be worse, and the bank will probably hold funds for a longer period of time than if you had good credit, but ultimately, that's just a cost of doing business. If there's inbound cash flow to be had, the exercise of managing costs is standard business practice. To stop them, you have to find the people behind the operation and put them in jail. Given that they're not US-based, that takes time. Most foreign governments have more pressing matters than taking down the scammer that is stealing money from non-constituents.
    - dangrossman 14y ago
      That's what MATCH (Member Alert to Control High-Risk Merchants) and TMF (Terminated Merchant File) are for. When someone establishes a merchant account, they must provide the tax IDs (SSNs) of the principals of the business, not just the business itself. If the account is terminated for an egregious offense, like fraud, all those principals get added to MATCH and TMF, which all acquiring banks have access to when reviewing new applications. In theory, it should be impossible to open multiple Visa/MasterCard merchant accounts for fraudulent purposes without having a new human being signing up each time, not just a new shell corporation.
      - bradleyland 14y ago
        It has been years since I worked in the industry, but once upon a time, I worked for some online pharmacy guys. Yeah, I know. Yeah, I'm ashamed to admit it, but I never spammed anyone, and we never did anything nefarious (technologically speaking). Anyway, things might have changed theses days, but the guy who ran that business was always fighting to keep merchant accounts online. He kept the dev team out of the business side, but I overheard plenty of conversations involving fake identities and shell companies. I have little doubt that its harder than it used to be, but still, it remains a "cost of doing business" issue.
- bradleyland 14y ago
  > I'm going to assume it is something based on VNC or RDP. It's not at all. Very few end user support tools are VNC or RDP based. Most of them use services like LogMeIn or GoToAssist. I've received a few of these calls where I strung them along and they were all using one of the two listed above (most used LogMeIn). I did encounter one that was using an off-brand tool, but it was commercial and not VNC or RDP based. Even if they were using something like VNC, you couldn't run a custom server to troll them, because the connection is initiated in the inverse of what you're used to when controlling a remote computer. They don't connect to your machine, you run an executable, which initiates a connection from your computer to their server.
  - jiggy2011 14y ago
    You could still build an application to troll them, it would just involve reverse engineering the custom protocol and having your program connect out to the proxy. I guess you would have to be a much more determined troll though with plenty of time on your hands. If they are using a legit service like logmein I'm surprised they aren't taking more action on this.
    - bradleyland 14y ago
      >You could still build an application to troll them, it would just involve reverse engineering the custom protocol and having your program connect out to the proxy. And do what? Say you reverse engineer the protocol. Then what? What proxy? Who said anything about a proxy? >If they are using a legit service like logmein I'm surprised they aren't taking more action on this. If they're using LogMeIn, good luck reverse engineering. LogMeIn's security is really fantastic. The protocol is encrypted with strong algorithms and has a lot of spoof detection measures in place. I'd love to hear an explanation of what you think you'd do with this theoretical troll server. I've messed with these guys a lot. They wan't control of your machine so they can install their software, then extort you for money. End of story. If they don't feel like they're moving in that direction, they hang up and move on. I drag them along using social engineering, then let them log in to a VM with nothing on it. I let them install their software, then I find a way to terminate the call and trash the VM.
Pezmc 14y ago
I have also had this happen to me and a friend. We have both calls recorded and the numbers logged, is there anywhere we are supposed to send these reports?
- DanBC 14y ago
  http://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/security/online-privacy/phishing-scams.aspx http://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/security/online-privacy/phish... http://blogs.msdn.com/b/securitytipstalk/archive/2010/03/09/don-t-fall-for-phony-phone-tech-support.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/securitytipstalk/archive/2010/03/09/...
- smallblacksun 14y ago
  http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/microsites/phonefraud/report.shtml http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/microsites/phonefraud/report.shtm...
navs 14y ago
Ah such tales are so entertaining. There was a brief period here in New Zealand when I'd receive a few of these kinds of calls. Folks in my Computer Science class considered it a badge of honor to receive a call and troll the scammer. It's been a while since I received any calls and I guess thats a good thing.
eckyptang 14y ago
We get these in the UK all the time. Usually either try and hold them on the line as long as possible (if bored) or tell them to "fuck off" straight away.
- rwmj 14y ago
  I use the "I'll just go and get the PC owner ... he's at the bottom of the garden". Then put the phone on mute. My personal record is getting them to hang on for 5 minutes.
  - eckyptang 14y ago
    Thats the trick I use, or pretend you are old and on a bad line. The latter gives them the impression that you're easy money.
    - JshWright 14y ago
      I should think the former would be a better indication of that.
      - eckyptang 14y ago
        You are correct :) I cannot writing my own read!
  - corin_ 14y ago
    Not quite the same, but I was on the phone to BT (British ISP) a couple of years ago as my internet was down yet again, and they were telling me to reboot my router. I'd already does as much diagnosing myself as possible, and completely knew rebooting my router would do nothing, but of course they wouldn't budge. I was in a pretty bad mood at them, so I said I'd put them on hold to go do it, then I went and had a bath. Twenty-five minutes later they were still on the line, and I got back and said "OK it's rebooted, still not working" and the call went on...
    - 14y ago
JimmaDaRustla 14y ago
Had it happen to many people I know. They only were successful with one person I know - they replaced her OEM Windows XP license with a pirated/fake one...then stole the original perhaps? Can't imagine how useful an OEM XP license to a Acer POS netbook would be valuable. If you get one of these calls, just screw with them - pretend you are following their instructions for as long as possible before saying "Ubuntu doesn't have that."
- ZoFreX 14y ago
  It seems they have gotten wise to this recently, I've heard a few stories about them being quite nasty if you do this. Anecdotally, this was on my Facebook feed yesterday (NSFW language): http://i.imgur.com/buv06.png http://i.imgur.com/buv06.png
- Deestan 14y ago
  > pretend you are following their instructions for as long as possible It's not just fun, it's a very responsible thing to do. Every minute they spend with you is a minute they don't spend screwing over someone else. But don't end with "Ubuntu doesn't have that" or "I only have a Mac, sorry" or some other snarky comment. Just fake stupidity until they give up. They are constantly tuning their scams based on successful and unsuccesful cons, and if they realize you're screwing with them they'll just filter you out of that. Or worse, they'll realize that "calling from the windows" tipped you off and change it to "Microsoft Support Associate" or something. If you instead come across as someone who believes the "calling from windows" bit, but for some reason aren't able to open the remote control software ("i try to download it but the screen moves?" or "when i click RUN, it says dotnet could not complete the operation?"), you will reinforce the stupid parts of the scam, and possibly have them waste time trying to research the technical difficulty you "experienced".
  - jiggy2011 14y ago
    I wonder why they are not also targeting Macs? I guess they are trying to get money out of people and Mac users probably have more money (on a broad average). I suppose they say they are calling from "Windows Support" but would it be a far stretch to also claim to represent someone from Apple? Or put someone else on the line under the premise of transferring you to Apple.
bradleyland 14y ago
Having done my time in the tech support trenches, I do one hell of an "end user" impersonation. I held one of these guys on the line for 1 hour 20 minutes one evening, then told him my phone was dying and that I'd need to call him back. I called back two days later and tied him up for another 20 minutes before he finally cracked and hung up on me. Yes, it was a terrific waste of time, but boy did it feel good. I consider it volunteering. All the time I spent on the phone with the scammer was time they couldn't spend targeting vulnerable individuals.
- danielweber 14y ago
  Better than I did. I got a call from "Visa" about a decade ago telling me that hackers could break "the codes" used to protect my credit card. I played dumb and gave him a card number (first 16 digits of pi) and we ended the call. I just a bunch of callbacks that I refused to answer several minutes later. I was still on dial-up and I don't think any of my credit cards offered virtual numbers at that point, but I should have set up a card with a $0.00 or $0.01 limit and given that to him, and then sicced fraud services on 'em.
- mmetzger 14y ago
  I wonder if they have phone metrics as well - "What do you mean you spent 80+ minutes on the phone with him and didn't get the credit card number? Don't you know where this will put you in the stack ranking?!?"
  - mikeash 14y ago
    Given that it's a criminal enterprise, with a direct financial link between a person's performance and the money they make, I'd guess that 1) their metrics are really easy, e.g. did you make at least $X today? and 2) the consequences for not measuring up are substantially worse than a poor annual review.
- mcantelon 14y ago
  I did the same for an hour or so. What made it fun was while he was doing everything he could to get me to run their .exe file, he didn't clue in that I was running a Mac (and, of course, I didn't tell him: I just expressed polite confusion why his instructions weren't working).
akharris 14y ago
Got the call from these guys a few weeks ago - actually about 20 calls. I finally picked up and kept the guy on for about 10 minutes asking him progressively dumber questions. Finally, I told him I was running OSX, which led him to call his manager. The manager had a really hard time understanding that I wasn't running Windows. It did not sit with his worldview at all.
- gfosco 14y ago
  I got one call... Soon as he said he was from Windows support, I laughed, said get lost man, and hung up.
- jetti 14y ago
  This now makes me hope I get called. If so, I'm going to say that I'm from Internet Explorer support and that THEY have viruses and they need to download a program so I can remove the virus from their computer.
- dbecker 14y ago
  I told the guy who called me "If you are going to keep doing this, the world would be a better place if you get run over by a bus. How does that make you feel?"
SparrowOS 14y ago
You sound like a confused nigger FBI guy. "Window Manager" is the task that moves windows around when you mouse drag on the borders. It does a lot of thing. God is God. You're fucked. God says... torments proposed studying comparison copy drink joying ofttimes admonished Wyoming unfeigned -such hesitating down Remember certain inflame counts unthought disquieted par debtor dry consecrated peaceful
btilly 14y ago
These guys call me every month. I hope the FTC does do something about it.
debacle 14y ago
Back when I was a BOFH, I would string these calls on all the time. Usually I could manage 30-40 minutes before the Indian would get tired of it and hang up. Occasionally I'd get one that would last for over an hour.
- pbhjpbhj 14y ago
  I've done this a few times at work - they are very convincing. This would definitely catch some of the MS Windows users I know. One time the Asian guy on the other end (who couldn't pronounce what he said was his name) accused me of wasting his time and said that they were going to invoice me! That was probably the funniest. After a couple of goes around it gets boring. Now I just go along for the first bit and then say I have to put the phone handset down to type and leave the phone on the side until it screeches at me that I've forgotten to put it 'on the hook'.
slashedzero 14y ago
Ugh. A friend's mother fell for this exact thing. Spent a couple days "disinfecting" her computer. A few hours later, it finally dawned on her that she had been scammed (when someone asked her how the people could have known she had viruses), but she was too proud to talk about it/fight with the scammers. Very smart though, targeting home phones, as they're just the right generation to fall for this type of scam.
simonsarris 14y ago
What is most bizarre to me is that someone could actually do this and do it more than once. Why wouldn't people feel bad about scamming someone like this? You have to talk to someone, get them on your side, and then scam them? I could maybe imagine myself in an alternate universe doing something like this, perhaps enjoying a sort of "heist" feeling like when you're playing poker and no one's aware that you're totally prepared to take the table. But if I succeeded (at the scamming call) I'm sure I would feel devastated that I just did that to someone. Maybe I'm just supremely naive, but it seems hard for me to imagine anyone I've ever met in my life scamming someone like this. It seems so completely incredible that it could ever happen on such a large scale. -------------- Is there something in a culture (besides wealth discrepancy per se) that makes this sort of thing more OK?
- thehigherlife 14y ago
  Your poker analogy is also not really the same thing either. In the scammers case he's already made the decision that him having your money is better than you, but also you haven't actually made a choice to part with your money at the front of the 'game'. In your poker analogy everyone who sits at that table understands the risk of being there.
- illuminate 14y ago
  Sadly, a great many people in this world do not think as you do.
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  These people are from poor countries like India , Pakistan , Nigeria etc. They probably imagine you as some affluent white guy with servants and sports cars who wouldn't miss a few K from his bank account.
  - dbecker 14y ago
    I work with people from India on a daily basis. I think their understanding of american lifestyles is more accurate than you give them credit for.
nicholassmith 14y ago
If I get them I generally just put the phone down immediately, or I'll wind them up asking stupid questions about their qualifications. However, my nana has had a few recently who've been super aggressive about it, I told her not to do anything they say and to call me if she's unsure, but apparently saying 'no' and putting the phone down gets you repeat calls if you sound like like a good mark. Edit: I'll point out, this happens in legitimate call centres as well. I worked for a fairly well known a credit card company and left not long after I heard a top seller say "Focus on old people, scare them enough and they'll always buy".
jiggy2011 14y ago
I wonder how these guys are organised. Is it just a bunch of people doing this from home who have heard about the scam from a friend and have tried to imitate it? Or are there actually physical call centres with rows of desks of scammers doing this as a 9-5?
- panacea 14y ago
  There has to be large scale call centres. The number of calls they're making is impressive. I got two of them from different people last night (I'm in Australia).
  - jiggy2011 14y ago
    Although that might suggest independent scammers. It would seem inefficient to cold call the same person again if the first was unsuccessful. Although it is possible they just take random numbers from a big list and don't update it until the end of the day. If they are indeed operated from actual call centres I would be curious to know how agents are recruited. I wonder if people actually apply for call centre jobs and are told they will be working for "Windows support" in other words, maybe some of them don't even know that they are scamming people.
darkstalker 14y ago
I would answer him "Sorry, I use Linux".
- TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago
  If you really wanted to mess with them, you could tell them you were using an old version of Lindows (now Linspire...)
CaioAlonso 14y ago
The scam site: http://windows4pc.webs.com/ http://windows4pc.webs.com/ EDIT: Webs.com has just frozen it.
lampe 14y ago
haha nice post! can someone call me like this? i got windows xp only in a VM :D
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
kevinalexbrown 14y ago
The most effective way to troll these types of scams is to let them convince you, but repeatedly tell them that your computer froze and needs to be restarted. If they feel certain you're willing to pay, they will wait for the 20 minutes it takes to "restart" your computer. The more you "restart" your computer, time they invest in you, and the less costly that 20 minutes will seem. That said I don't think I'd have the patience to do it more than once. And I suppose there are better ways to help humanity than trolling scammers.
- zalew 14y ago
  this guy on ubuntu trolled them well http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSFRtPus3DQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSFRtPus3DQ
- JagMicker 14y ago
  I'd suggest trying to get the email address and any other personal info. of the scammer. Tell them you have an office with 200 PC's and they're all infected. Tell them you want to buy their software for all of your PC's. Try to get bank wire/routing info or a mailing address to send payment. Then report to FTC, DHS, FBI, et al.
devsatish 14y ago
The pitches for these sites can be seen on day-time tv, and late night tv, sandwiched between infomercials. I heard these on radio too. ex: doublemyspeed.com , totallyfast.com
16s 14y ago
I won't answer when the caller has masked their phone number. I have too many things to do. They can leave a msg if it's important. They never do.
- pbhjpbhj 14y ago
  One of the things that frustrates me is that phone companies will carry calls purporting to be from numbers that don't terminate. Why would they ever think that was a good idea? You get a scammer, they've sent their [spoofed] number, you ring it and get 'boo-boo-boop this number is not recognised'. The phone company knows the numbers that aren't taken because they use that list when you set up a new phone line. Though it does just strike me that it's possible the number actual did terminate but the scammers pretend it didn't; but that seems a long shot.
mnazim 14y ago
I couldn't help but read it in the Russell Peters style Indian accent. It wasn't until the middle of article that I noticed the subconscious act. (DISCLAIMER: I belong to the same part of the world and probably have the same accent)
josephcooney 14y ago
Fellow aussie Troy Hunt seems to love messing with these people. http://www.troyhunt.com/2012/08/cold-call-scammed-again-but-this-time.html http://www.troyhunt.com/2012/08/cold-call-scammed-again-but-... http://www.troyhunt.com/2012/04/type-www-ok-w-w-w-d-o-t-antagonising.html http://www.troyhunt.com/2012/04/type-www-ok-w-w-w-d-o-t-anta...
patrickdavey 14y ago
If you've not seen it... http://www.itslenny.com/ http://www.itslenny.com/ you can forward VOIP telemarkers to "lenny" - an automated bot who will happily chat with them for ... ever.. There are some classic mp3s to listen to.
zapt02 14y ago
This is interesting but the article is really sub-par and they ended too soon.
garazy 14y ago
I had exactly the same call with someone, I wish I'd thought of the VM idea but I didn't, however I did record it - http://soundcloud.com/gbrewer-1/microsoft-telephone-scam/s-ezcsf http://soundcloud.com/gbrewer-1/microsoft-telephone-scam/s-e... I felt a bit sorry for the guy it's clearly a boiler room with high expectations.
kevinbluer 14y ago
Potential idea for a hackathon! A 419eater.com for tech support scammers. Some of them are amazing: http://www.419eater.com/html/samuel_eze.htm http://www.419eater.com/html/samuel_eze.htm

242 points by chinmoy 14y ago

jiggy2011 14y ago

I've had these calls too, now and again but never had the patience to keep them on the line. So , they want to install some kind of remote admin software on your PC? I'm going to assume it is something based on VNC or RDP. In that case if you really wanted to troll them it might be fun to figure out which protocol it was using and implement a custom server that you can run when they call you. Any fun ideas as to what that could do?

furyg3 14y ago
It seems to me that the best idea would be for credit card companies to issue "Fraud" cc numbers to certain groups of people. Once a few these are processed, that merchant account can be shut down... it's a fraud.
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  Good idea, but I assume whatever merchant they are using is getting charge backs all the time so they probably know who they are. That's assuming they are even using a legit merchant account as opposed to just stealing numbers which are exploited in some other way.
  - ConstantineXVI 14y ago
    Just yesterday I ran into someone's computer hit with a variant on this scam[0], which was demanding you buy them a prepaid debit card to pay off the ransom. Seems nearly impossible to trace back to the extortionist if they're careful about spending them. [0] http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2012/august/new-internet-scam http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2012/august/new-internet-sca...
- bradleyland 14y ago
  You needn't issue any special CC numbers. "Follow the money" is standard fraud investigation practice, and a defrauded consumer's CC will do just fine. Tracing the transactions back to the processor and merchant account is doable, but it's often a temporary solution. How do you stop them from simply opening another? When someone establishes a merchant account, they often do so as a corporation. Corporation blacklisted? Start another one. The requirements for opening a merchant account are similar to a standard credit check. If you have no credit history, your terms will be worse, and the bank will probably hold funds for a longer period of time than if you had good credit, but ultimately, that's just a cost of doing business. If there's inbound cash flow to be had, the exercise of managing costs is standard business practice. To stop them, you have to find the people behind the operation and put them in jail. Given that they're not US-based, that takes time. Most foreign governments have more pressing matters than taking down the scammer that is stealing money from non-constituents.
  - dangrossman 14y ago
    That's what MATCH (Member Alert to Control High-Risk Merchants) and TMF (Terminated Merchant File) are for. When someone establishes a merchant account, they must provide the tax IDs (SSNs) of the principals of the business, not just the business itself. If the account is terminated for an egregious offense, like fraud, all those principals get added to MATCH and TMF, which all acquiring banks have access to when reviewing new applications. In theory, it should be impossible to open multiple Visa/MasterCard merchant accounts for fraudulent purposes without having a new human being signing up each time, not just a new shell corporation.
    - bradleyland 14y ago
      It has been years since I worked in the industry, but once upon a time, I worked for some online pharmacy guys. Yeah, I know. Yeah, I'm ashamed to admit it, but I never spammed anyone, and we never did anything nefarious (technologically speaking). Anyway, things might have changed theses days, but the guy who ran that business was always fighting to keep merchant accounts online. He kept the dev team out of the business side, but I overheard plenty of conversations involving fake identities and shell companies. I have little doubt that its harder than it used to be, but still, it remains a "cost of doing business" issue.
bradleyland 14y ago
> I'm going to assume it is something based on VNC or RDP. It's not at all. Very few end user support tools are VNC or RDP based. Most of them use services like LogMeIn or GoToAssist. I've received a few of these calls where I strung them along and they were all using one of the two listed above (most used LogMeIn). I did encounter one that was using an off-brand tool, but it was commercial and not VNC or RDP based. Even if they were using something like VNC, you couldn't run a custom server to troll them, because the connection is initiated in the inverse of what you're used to when controlling a remote computer. They don't connect to your machine, you run an executable, which initiates a connection from your computer to their server.
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  You could still build an application to troll them, it would just involve reverse engineering the custom protocol and having your program connect out to the proxy. I guess you would have to be a much more determined troll though with plenty of time on your hands. If they are using a legit service like logmein I'm surprised they aren't taking more action on this.
  - bradleyland 14y ago
    >You could still build an application to troll them, it would just involve reverse engineering the custom protocol and having your program connect out to the proxy. And do what? Say you reverse engineer the protocol. Then what? What proxy? Who said anything about a proxy? >If they are using a legit service like logmein I'm surprised they aren't taking more action on this. If they're using LogMeIn, good luck reverse engineering. LogMeIn's security is really fantastic. The protocol is encrypted with strong algorithms and has a lot of spoof detection measures in place. I'd love to hear an explanation of what you think you'd do with this theoretical troll server. I've messed with these guys a lot. They wan't control of your machine so they can install their software, then extort you for money. End of story. If they don't feel like they're moving in that direction, they hang up and move on. I drag them along using social engineering, then let them log in to a VM with nothing on it. I let them install their software, then I find a way to terminate the call and trash the VM.

Pezmc 14y ago

I have also had this happen to me and a friend. We have both calls recorded and the numbers logged, is there anywhere we are supposed to send these reports?

DanBC 14y ago
http://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/security/online-privacy/phishing-scams.aspx http://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/security/online-privacy/phish... http://blogs.msdn.com/b/securitytipstalk/archive/2010/03/09/don-t-fall-for-phony-phone-tech-support.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/securitytipstalk/archive/2010/03/09/...
smallblacksun 14y ago
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/microsites/phonefraud/report.shtml http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/microsites/phonefraud/report.shtm...

navs 14y ago

Ah such tales are so entertaining. There was a brief period here in New Zealand when I'd receive a few of these kinds of calls. Folks in my Computer Science class considered it a badge of honor to receive a call and troll the scammer. It's been a while since I received any calls and I guess thats a good thing.

eckyptang 14y ago

We get these in the UK all the time. Usually either try and hold them on the line as long as possible (if bored) or tell them to "fuck off" straight away.

rwmj 14y ago
I use the "I'll just go and get the PC owner ... he's at the bottom of the garden". Then put the phone on mute. My personal record is getting them to hang on for 5 minutes.
- eckyptang 14y ago
  Thats the trick I use, or pretend you are old and on a bad line. The latter gives them the impression that you're easy money.
  - JshWright 14y ago
    I should think the former would be a better indication of that.
    - eckyptang 14y ago
      You are correct :) I cannot writing my own read!
- corin_ 14y ago
  Not quite the same, but I was on the phone to BT (British ISP) a couple of years ago as my internet was down yet again, and they were telling me to reboot my router. I'd already does as much diagnosing myself as possible, and completely knew rebooting my router would do nothing, but of course they wouldn't budge. I was in a pretty bad mood at them, so I said I'd put them on hold to go do it, then I went and had a bath. Twenty-five minutes later they were still on the line, and I got back and said "OK it's rebooted, still not working" and the call went on...
  - 14y ago

JimmaDaRustla 14y ago

Had it happen to many people I know. They only were successful with one person I know - they replaced her OEM Windows XP license with a pirated/fake one...then stole the original perhaps? Can't imagine how useful an OEM XP license to a Acer POS netbook would be valuable. If you get one of these calls, just screw with them - pretend you are following their instructions for as long as possible before saying "Ubuntu doesn't have that."

ZoFreX 14y ago
It seems they have gotten wise to this recently, I've heard a few stories about them being quite nasty if you do this. Anecdotally, this was on my Facebook feed yesterday (NSFW language): http://i.imgur.com/buv06.png http://i.imgur.com/buv06.png
Deestan 14y ago
> pretend you are following their instructions for as long as possible It's not just fun, it's a very responsible thing to do. Every minute they spend with you is a minute they don't spend screwing over someone else. But don't end with "Ubuntu doesn't have that" or "I only have a Mac, sorry" or some other snarky comment. Just fake stupidity until they give up. They are constantly tuning their scams based on successful and unsuccesful cons, and if they realize you're screwing with them they'll just filter you out of that. Or worse, they'll realize that "calling from the windows" tipped you off and change it to "Microsoft Support Associate" or something. If you instead come across as someone who believes the "calling from windows" bit, but for some reason aren't able to open the remote control software ("i try to download it but the screen moves?" or "when i click RUN, it says dotnet could not complete the operation?"), you will reinforce the stupid parts of the scam, and possibly have them waste time trying to research the technical difficulty you "experienced".
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  I wonder why they are not also targeting Macs? I guess they are trying to get money out of people and Mac users probably have more money (on a broad average). I suppose they say they are calling from "Windows Support" but would it be a far stretch to also claim to represent someone from Apple? Or put someone else on the line under the premise of transferring you to Apple.

bradleyland 14y ago

Having done my time in the tech support trenches, I do one hell of an "end user" impersonation. I held one of these guys on the line for 1 hour 20 minutes one evening, then told him my phone was dying and that I'd need to call him back. I called back two days later and tied him up for another 20 minutes before he finally cracked and hung up on me. Yes, it was a terrific waste of time, but boy did it feel good. I consider it volunteering. All the time I spent on the phone with the scammer was time they couldn't spend targeting vulnerable individuals.

danielweber 14y ago
Better than I did. I got a call from "Visa" about a decade ago telling me that hackers could break "the codes" used to protect my credit card. I played dumb and gave him a card number (first 16 digits of pi) and we ended the call. I just a bunch of callbacks that I refused to answer several minutes later. I was still on dial-up and I don't think any of my credit cards offered virtual numbers at that point, but I should have set up a card with a $0.00 or $0.01 limit and given that to him, and then sicced fraud services on 'em.
mmetzger 14y ago
I wonder if they have phone metrics as well - "What do you mean you spent 80+ minutes on the phone with him and didn't get the credit card number? Don't you know where this will put you in the stack ranking?!?"
- mikeash 14y ago
  Given that it's a criminal enterprise, with a direct financial link between a person's performance and the money they make, I'd guess that 1) their metrics are really easy, e.g. did you make at least $X today? and 2) the consequences for not measuring up are substantially worse than a poor annual review.
mcantelon 14y ago
I did the same for an hour or so. What made it fun was while he was doing everything he could to get me to run their .exe file, he didn't clue in that I was running a Mac (and, of course, I didn't tell him: I just expressed polite confusion why his instructions weren't working).

akharris 14y ago

Got the call from these guys a few weeks ago - actually about 20 calls. I finally picked up and kept the guy on for about 10 minutes asking him progressively dumber questions. Finally, I told him I was running OSX, which led him to call his manager. The manager had a really hard time understanding that I wasn't running Windows. It did not sit with his worldview at all.

gfosco 14y ago
I got one call... Soon as he said he was from Windows support, I laughed, said get lost man, and hung up.
jetti 14y ago
This now makes me hope I get called. If so, I'm going to say that I'm from Internet Explorer support and that THEY have viruses and they need to download a program so I can remove the virus from their computer.
dbecker 14y ago
I told the guy who called me "If you are going to keep doing this, the world would be a better place if you get run over by a bus. How does that make you feel?"

SparrowOS 14y ago

You sound like a confused nigger FBI guy. "Window Manager" is the task that moves windows around when you mouse drag on the borders. It does a lot of thing. God is God. You're fucked. God says... torments proposed studying comparison copy drink joying ofttimes admonished Wyoming unfeigned -such hesitating down Remember certain inflame counts unthought disquieted par debtor dry consecrated peaceful

btilly 14y ago

These guys call me every month. I hope the FTC does do something about it.

debacle 14y ago

Back when I was a BOFH, I would string these calls on all the time. Usually I could manage 30-40 minutes before the Indian would get tired of it and hang up. Occasionally I'd get one that would last for over an hour.

pbhjpbhj 14y ago
I've done this a few times at work - they are very convincing. This would definitely catch some of the MS Windows users I know. One time the Asian guy on the other end (who couldn't pronounce what he said was his name) accused me of wasting his time and said that they were going to invoice me! That was probably the funniest. After a couple of goes around it gets boring. Now I just go along for the first bit and then say I have to put the phone handset down to type and leave the phone on the side until it screeches at me that I've forgotten to put it 'on the hook'.

slashedzero 14y ago

Ugh. A friend's mother fell for this exact thing. Spent a couple days "disinfecting" her computer. A few hours later, it finally dawned on her that she had been scammed (when someone asked her how the people could have known she had viruses), but she was too proud to talk about it/fight with the scammers. Very smart though, targeting home phones, as they're just the right generation to fall for this type of scam.

simonsarris 14y ago

What is most bizarre to me is that someone could actually do this and do it more than once. Why wouldn't people feel bad about scamming someone like this? You have to talk to someone, get them on your side, and then scam them? I could maybe imagine myself in an alternate universe doing something like this, perhaps enjoying a sort of "heist" feeling like when you're playing poker and no one's aware that you're totally prepared to take the table. But if I succeeded (at the scamming call) I'm sure I would feel devastated that I just did that to someone. Maybe I'm just supremely naive, but it seems hard for me to imagine anyone I've ever met in my life scamming someone like this. It seems so completely incredible that it could ever happen on such a large scale. -------------- Is there something in a culture (besides wealth discrepancy per se) that makes this sort of thing more OK?

thehigherlife 14y ago
Your poker analogy is also not really the same thing either. In the scammers case he's already made the decision that him having your money is better than you, but also you haven't actually made a choice to part with your money at the front of the 'game'. In your poker analogy everyone who sits at that table understands the risk of being there.
illuminate 14y ago
Sadly, a great many people in this world do not think as you do.
jiggy2011 14y ago
These people are from poor countries like India , Pakistan , Nigeria etc. They probably imagine you as some affluent white guy with servants and sports cars who wouldn't miss a few K from his bank account.
- dbecker 14y ago
  I work with people from India on a daily basis. I think their understanding of american lifestyles is more accurate than you give them credit for.

nicholassmith 14y ago

If I get them I generally just put the phone down immediately, or I'll wind them up asking stupid questions about their qualifications. However, my nana has had a few recently who've been super aggressive about it, I told her not to do anything they say and to call me if she's unsure, but apparently saying 'no' and putting the phone down gets you repeat calls if you sound like like a good mark. Edit: I'll point out, this happens in legitimate call centres as well. I worked for a fairly well known a credit card company and left not long after I heard a top seller say "Focus on old people, scare them enough and they'll always buy".

jiggy2011 14y ago

I wonder how these guys are organised. Is it just a bunch of people doing this from home who have heard about the scam from a friend and have tried to imitate it? Or are there actually physical call centres with rows of desks of scammers doing this as a 9-5?

panacea 14y ago
There has to be large scale call centres. The number of calls they're making is impressive. I got two of them from different people last night (I'm in Australia).
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  Although that might suggest independent scammers. It would seem inefficient to cold call the same person again if the first was unsuccessful. Although it is possible they just take random numbers from a big list and don't update it until the end of the day. If they are indeed operated from actual call centres I would be curious to know how agents are recruited. I wonder if people actually apply for call centre jobs and are told they will be working for "Windows support" in other words, maybe some of them don't even know that they are scamming people.

darkstalker 14y ago

I would answer him "Sorry, I use Linux".

TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago
If you really wanted to mess with them, you could tell them you were using an old version of Lindows (now Linspire...)

CaioAlonso 14y ago

The scam site: http://windows4pc.webs.com/ http://windows4pc.webs.com/ EDIT: Webs.com has just frozen it.

lampe 14y ago

haha nice post! can someone call me like this? i got windows xp only in a VM :D

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

kevinalexbrown 14y ago

The most effective way to troll these types of scams is to let them convince you, but repeatedly tell them that your computer froze and needs to be restarted. If they feel certain you're willing to pay, they will wait for the 20 minutes it takes to "restart" your computer. The more you "restart" your computer, time they invest in you, and the less costly that 20 minutes will seem. That said I don't think I'd have the patience to do it more than once. And I suppose there are better ways to help humanity than trolling scammers.

zalew 14y ago
this guy on ubuntu trolled them well http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSFRtPus3DQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSFRtPus3DQ
JagMicker 14y ago
I'd suggest trying to get the email address and any other personal info. of the scammer. Tell them you have an office with 200 PC's and they're all infected. Tell them you want to buy their software for all of your PC's. Try to get bank wire/routing info or a mailing address to send payment. Then report to FTC, DHS, FBI, et al.

devsatish 14y ago

The pitches for these sites can be seen on day-time tv, and late night tv, sandwiched between infomercials. I heard these on radio too. ex: doublemyspeed.com , totallyfast.com

16s 14y ago

I won't answer when the caller has masked their phone number. I have too many things to do. They can leave a msg if it's important. They never do.

pbhjpbhj 14y ago
One of the things that frustrates me is that phone companies will carry calls purporting to be from numbers that don't terminate. Why would they ever think that was a good idea? You get a scammer, they've sent their [spoofed] number, you ring it and get 'boo-boo-boop this number is not recognised'. The phone company knows the numbers that aren't taken because they use that list when you set up a new phone line. Though it does just strike me that it's possible the number actual did terminate but the scammers pretend it didn't; but that seems a long shot.

mnazim 14y ago

I couldn't help but read it in the Russell Peters style Indian accent. It wasn't until the middle of article that I noticed the subconscious act. (DISCLAIMER: I belong to the same part of the world and probably have the same accent)

josephcooney 14y ago

Fellow aussie Troy Hunt seems to love messing with these people. http://www.troyhunt.com/2012/08/cold-call-scammed-again-but-this-time.html http://www.troyhunt.com/2012/08/cold-call-scammed-again-but-... http://www.troyhunt.com/2012/04/type-www-ok-w-w-w-d-o-t-antagonising.html http://www.troyhunt.com/2012/04/type-www-ok-w-w-w-d-o-t-anta...

patrickdavey 14y ago

If you've not seen it... http://www.itslenny.com/ http://www.itslenny.com/ you can forward VOIP telemarkers to "lenny" - an automated bot who will happily chat with them for ... ever.. There are some classic mp3s to listen to.

zapt02 14y ago

This is interesting but the article is really sub-par and they ended too soon.

garazy 14y ago

I had exactly the same call with someone, I wish I'd thought of the VM idea but I didn't, however I did record it - http://soundcloud.com/gbrewer-1/microsoft-telephone-scam/s-ezcsf http://soundcloud.com/gbrewer-1/microsoft-telephone-scam/s-e... I felt a bit sorry for the guy it's clearly a boiler room with high expectations.

kevinbluer 14y ago

Potential idea for a hackathon! A 419eater.com for tech support scammers. Some of them are amazing: http://www.419eater.com/html/samuel_eze.htm http://www.419eater.com/html/samuel_eze.htm