Weird phone call! "online pc doctor" - Only thread on these scam calls please

pslat

Ceekay wrote: »

My well fell hook, line and sinker to one of these guys yesterday. When I came home from work, there was a new Antivirus Protection 'K7 total protection', a 'Defraggler' thing, and CCleaner installed. She said she 'only' paid €59 euro for this using her Laser Card. We've closed the Laser Account and will reopen a new account. any advice on what else I need to do??

Hi, sorry you got stung. I agree with Crosáidí about Defraggler and CCleaner being legit but considering the guys who installed them I'd remove their versions just in case they are tampered with. Something I'd do straight away is disable remote assistance on the pc just in case they have left it so they can access it again later (so possibly get passwords or cc details etc.). I hear they use gotomypc or similar rather than remote access but I'd disable it just in case. Also make sure the firewall is still on.
Don't know anything about 'K7 total protection' but I'd dump it in favour of one of the rated ones such as Avira(my #1) or Avg or if you want to pay :eek:Symantec or McAfee.
Also I'd run a spyware/malware scanner, (Malwarebytes is a reliable one) to make sure your Missus's machine is clear.
Good luck. If they ever ring me I'll give em one for ye.:mad:

Ceekay

Thanks guys for the advice!

norbert64

Was over at my Aunts one day when she got a phone call from these guys I believe. She was on the phone maybe 10 minutes before she came into me and asked me to talk to them, as she hadn't a clue what they were on about.

It was a male caller who gave me a big spiel about how you can get hit with virus/adware and other bad stuff whenever you go online. He wanted to help us out with this special scanning software.
I just told him I have my own scanning software and that I am generally careful when browsing. He hung up on me then. :cool:

Mind you, I think they have finally gotten around to us now. We got a call at home there this morning. We were away, so missed them. Area code 00253, which after googling is apparenlty for Djibouti, Northeast Africa. AFAIK, we have no distant relatives there, lol, so it has to be some kind of cold call situation.

It was the number listed here \/
http://www.securityitrust.com/tag/00253/

_Whimsical_

Gotta a call from these again today, but this time from a UK number : 004423168735

They were calling themselves Speed Login (Or possibly Login Speed).

Anyone else worry that they're now thinking "oh these guys again" everytime they pick up the phone to be met with an Indian voice?

I've had at least one call a day from them for months now and these days when I pick up to hear an Indian voice I'm almost immediately parroting off "I'm not interested, don't call back".

Console

got linked to this thread from After Hours.

Never heard about such a scam before. Not shocking I guess. Millions of scams out there.


Am I alone in thinking that is not about trying to sell you something you dont need (ie, to fix something thats not broken) but a scam to get all your details while charging you a fee at the same time, lol.

Scorpion venom

exactly scammers had a few calls of them Indian voice makes me laugh like i'm gonna let them remote into my pc lol lol lol but theres people out there that don't understand and panic when they hear VIRUS on there PC and get caught out

Cork24

Why in Gods name are people trying to act all cool and say i'm going to feel them remote in... WTF ?

Look if you allow them to remote in, you Screen Normally goes blank, whats stopping them from opening up a port ? maybe port 5800 that Remote Software ?

Who ever is doing the Scam,, they know their sh**t look up Key2 former NSAKEY.. a So called Back door key to Windows.. some Prof. found any 2 keys in Windows which what they are for is any ones guess.

My name is URL

Just got a call from (I assume) the same guys. The number was unavailable. I just let your man talk for about 10 minutes and acted naive and accepting of his help, then told him that I work in IT and know that it's a scam. He got angry then and warned me not to blame his service if my computer develops problems!

Scorpion venom

Haha FairPlay lol

seeing_ie

My father got done by these guys.

The fecker was well warned by me about all aspects of pc security but the older generation really are on a different level.

He actually gave cc details etc and stayed on the line with them for 45 mins while they had full access to his pc.
I hit the f@rking roof when I heard this, ended up getting the Gardaí, UK online fraud squad, credit card company and bank involved. Cancelled all accounts and credit cards etc. Everything.
Formatted HDD & re-installed O/S and locked down his pc for the moment too, email and web only for him.
With the amount of phone calls, hassle and time pops had to spend cleaning up this mess, at least I can be sure he won't do it again!

e2a: the credit card company refunded the €65 "tech support fee" after some discussion.

montydorito

Galway here

Got called by them just there , Didnt have the patience

he said my computer was infected and i need to just check blah blah ... you can do it offline ( i guessing he wanted remote access\??)

"how do you get my number? "
the server at blah blah

"no seriuosly how did you get my number ?"
i just told you ( hard to understand accent)

"im calling the police"

FGR

I'll just let them go on and on and on and then eventually tell them that I didn't know my Amstrad CPC464 had internet access in the first place!

pslat

ForegoneReality wrote: »

I'll just let them go on and on and on and then eventually tell them that I didn't know my Amstrad CPC464 had internet access in the first place!

Heh, Must dig out the oul ZX81 and leave it by the phone.:D
- See if they can support that.

ART6

Having now had a number of these calls, I can't be bothered with humouring or baiting them. I now just say "What part of the words f**k off don't you understand?" Mind you, when they have interrupted what I was doing at the time I have been inclined to add a racist comment -- to my discredit I admit!:rolleyes:

ParkRunner

Got a call from them myself there this afternoon and by the sounds of things there was a room full of people there chatting away. They must be making an absolute fortune from this!

Charlie-Bravo

I had the pleasure of getting some help with my computer problems today. So here goes:

Phone rings and a UK number comes up +440253820308 - I'm thinking it's not for me and let the wife answer it. The guy tells her he is from Microsoft Operating System and there is a problem with her computer. She can't make out what exactly he is saying as his English is very poor (sounds like an Indian chap). So she gets fed up and hands the phone to me.

She tells me someone from Microsoft Operating system is on the phone - My first scam call!!! I start to rub my hands. I managed to keep the guy on the phone for 8 mintues:

He asked me if my computer was slow - I said no its seems fine. He asked if the webpages are slow to load - I said it wassuper quick and I had no problems. He asked how old the computer was - I said 3 weeks for the laugh(I wish it was brand new!!!) He asked me to hold the Windows key and press R on the computer. I hadn't even started the computer but played along pretending I was in front of it. He then asked me to type into the run box 'eventvwr'. I said Event Viewer came up. He then asked me if I see any error messages - I said, there are none - everythings seems to be fine!!

Next he asked me what antivirus I had - I lied and said I had Norton Internet Security suite. He then asked me what Malware programs I am running - Norton I told him (I wanted to find out as many different way they could find a 'problem' with my computer).

Next I asked him a question - where he was calling from - he said Microsft Operatng System. I asked him where he was located - India??? He said Dublin - where are the offices in Dublin I asked? He didn't give me a straight answer so I asked him for the first couple of letters in the Dublin postcode at least - he hangs up!!! Damn it, my fun was over.

norbert64

Well this doesn't bode well. Got a call last Saturday morn, then again this Thursday morning. Moms answered on Thursday and they gave her the usual M$ security spiel. I'd warned her ahead of time so she just listened and then started questioning them about where they got our number. After continually pressing them on it, they eventually hung up.

Bad news is though, that they rang again there this evening. :mad:

patentseven

norbert64: Yep! and they will keep on ringing.

SimpleLogic

Just got a call from these guys again, unavailable number. Last phone call was about a year ago. Knew it was a scam so was looking forward to having a bit of a laugh with the guy. He hung up pretty quick though when I started asking him questions

I really would like to report these guys to someone though. The thought of them tricking some old person makes me sick. Is there anyone I can really contact who will do something?

patentseven

It seems not. It's been put out on Crimeline & the national press. Some
people will get caught with these AHs. If they weren't catching people out
they wouldn't be ringing private houses.

TechFreak

I got a call from these guys last Saturday morning. And I got to admit I was secretly delighted. I sat on the couch opened a can of coke and relished at the chance to screw around with them for a change for a few minutes.

First of all I kept thanking them for ringing me, and saying they were a credit to society, that this should be announced on the news, or the internet web thingy. I said “I never knew I had a virus on my computer, although it had felt a bit cold lately and it was making a coughing sound every now and again”

Was that a sign it had a virus or a fever??

I was told not to worry that they could look after it. They ran through the same script as others mentioned. When they got to the eventvwr part they said “ Does anything appear on your screen?”

I said “ no, the screen isn’t on.”

They got a bit annoyed now.When they said “why?” I said that they never told me to plug in my computer.

Eventually I got upgraded to a supervisor ( for whatever reasons I don’t know, the call was pushing 10 minutes as this stage). I thanked him for the call too, told him he had a lovely voice and if he liked Celine Dion. He did.

I said he was very good from ringing all the way from Sony to tell me about the problem. He got annoyed and said he’s not from Sony. I said “Are you from Microsoft”?...He said “no”.....this went on and on through companies for about 4 minutes. I even asked him if he was called from the Doctors regarding that “little Issue I had with the hamster, I thought you name was Doctor Dave not Doctor PC J ”.

He started talking over me saying “Your internet is not secure and your browsing may not be safe, files are coming on to your computer that you don’t understand”

I said back to him....”Well Im using a browser with enhanced privacy settings that blocks cookies, auto clears temp files after each viewing etc, I run Norton internet security, I use a tunnelling program via an anonymous proxy, and I update to date spyware.......so what files exactly are the issue?

He then went silent for about 30 seconds and hung up.15 minutes, a new personal best.

Kinda hope they call back.

Queenroadkill

I have been getting calls from these guys for a year or so now. It seems my number comes up, stays in the active system for a while, and then returns to the depths of their database again only to rotate back to the top some months later. There is no way of getting it removed... i've tried several times.. they always promise they will and never do. And there's no way to block the number because they're calling through a voip type system.

I've spoken to microsoft and the fraud office (several times) about them. I've spoken to PC doctor about the fact that I've reported them. I've kept them on the phone for up to an hour, stringing them along to get as much detail as I can about them and on various occasions I've had my fun with the different tactics you can use when they call.

Now I've no interest in wasting a second more of my life talking to them, so my most recent approach which I used with success to get off the West African phone scammers database is putting them on hold as soon I realise who's calling, turn the loudest speaker in the house up to full and take them off hold with the earpiece right against the speaker. Blast the ears off the f**kers I live in hope that this will work! And if it doesn't then it is at least some kind of payback.

-PornStar-

Got one of these calls yesterday, but the guy hung up almost instantly. They called back again today. I let off a string of expletives until he hung up. Nice bit of free therapy they provide.

patentseven

No matter what way you handle them they are still disruptive to peoples
lives to whatever degree. Best to hang up on them immediately - they keep ringing back anyway -unless you want to get your rocks off & have fun with them, one of the folks who gave out to them for not delivering
his Indian home delivery was funny. The guy got "hissing mad" that he was refered as a delivery boy - this thief?

My boyfriend finally got one of 'em, he's been dying to since I hung up on them weeks ago. He pretended like he was going through event veiwer, until the guy asked what was happing, he said "not much at the moment, we'll have to wait till I've finished my installation of OSX" (true, too), and the guy said he'd wait! So boyfriend askes him "Where's your office?" - immediately he's put onto the "superviser" who tells him his name is John and they're in "Oxford Shire". Fella gets most amused and says "Oxford SHIRE?" then says "Sounds like you're in a net cafe!" - guy hangs up. They don't like being questioned about their location much!

tallaghtoutlaws

I got calls from these once a day for a month and I used to answer it using different ways. From made up company names to made law enforcement names to Microsoft themselves.

Then one day I wanted to have a laugh at one as she sounded the least confident of the lot of them. I played along and then I asked her to thank her fellow Microsoft co workers for me and she said she wasn't from Microsoft so I challenged that, turning the whole conversation from happy to angry. To cut a long story short I called her and her supervisor everything from thieves to criminals to muppets to space cadets to any name that came to mind first and after that day haven't had a call since

I kind of miss them calling me now Forever alone

jack presley

They're obviously on their next go through the phone book as after being off the radar for the past couple of months, I'm back getting these calls.

'scorthy

Hi Folks,

an acquaintance just happy to mention that he was having an issue with windows7 and shut down his PC. A few moments later he got a call from a foreign speaking gent who said he was calling from the States on behalf of Microsoft as an problem had been flagged and he was obliged to offer assistance with the PC problem. My acquaintance was alarmed and told the guy that he didn't require assistance that his son was computer literate. The caller was a bit put out and said that he would sign off on the incident and tell Microsoft that no assistance was required.

Is this for real?

fionny

No its almost definitely a scam.

See this thread: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055837564

'scorthy

Thanks fionny,

thought as much but was it a coincidence that just moments after his PC failure they called :eek: ?

I thought it might be that prompt "send report" and they intercepted it!

Ah well, the next time I see him I'll let him know he was right to cut your man short.

P.S. that link told exactly the same story I've related.