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

jack presley

nodolan wrote: »

The guy I was with is a Garda, he said he'll be reporting the matter.

No point, the number can't be traced.

Hal Emmerich

nodolan wrote: »

Happy to report he hadn't installed anything but had come very close to coughing up GBP199.

Pity he wasn't caught, it might have made them get off their holes and do something about this.

nodolan

Cork24 wrote: »

best thing people can do is get their number off public.. When you Say Microsoft Certified Professional.. What Courses did you do ? MCSE, MCSA currently doing MCITP Virtualization Administrator on Windows Server 2008 R2

I'm afraid my MCP status is probably expired, Windows NT Workstation and Server along with Windows and Server 2000
MCITP-VA? Wow!! Best of luck. I see from the emails I'm still getting that the IT job market is still quite strong so your MCITP will be a great asset.

jack presley wrote: »

No point, the number can't be traced.

Skype and other types of VOIP calls can be traced given the right equipment and a bit of motivation and cooperation from the telecom company.
http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2006/08/7582.ars

Hal Emmerich wrote: »

Pity he wasn't caught, it might have made them get off their holes and do something about this.

Agreed

squod

I just keep asking for their address, they do call regularly. One of them might let slip.

jimoc

My mother got a call from this shower last night saying that
'There may be very serious problems with a virus on your computer'
Her response that 'I dont know much about these computers, I'll put you onto my son, he's a programmer so he'll understand' was rapidly followed by the caller hanging up.
I was so bummed cause I was bored and had 3 hours to kill

Dan Jaman

The a**eholes are getting smarter. I was previously in the habit of just ignoring calls from them as it came up in CID as 00401, so would pickup and hangup to kill the call.
Today, there was a call from a non-displayed number and I'd been expecting one from the UK, from a mobile number which never shows, so I picked up. It was an Indian chap asking for me by name. "Feck orf", was my reply.

jack presley

squod wrote: »

I just keep asking for their address, they do call regularly. One of them might let slip.

When I used to get these calls (no home phone now) they would tell me that their address was in Dublin. North Earl Street and Smithfield were two examples given. I'd then ask them what the weather was there and then listen to them squirm when I told them it was actually the opposite and I was only down the road, even if it wasn't.

duckysauce

Cork24 wrote: »

best thing people can do is get their number off public..

the ***** rang me and i am ex dir so that does not help, say they have buddies working in eircondition;) that supply the numbers.

CiaranMT

Posted this experience on another forum, just gonna copy and paste to save some effort:


Had them call the house on Wednesday last.

After I copped who it was, and they asked me to go to the PC, I left them
for a few seconds and then hung up.

They called non-stop for about ten minutes, with myself cancelling the call
as soon as it came through - Great craic

Switched to answering the phone and not saying anything, or putting it up
to the TV speakers, or playing a ring-tone off the mobile.

This all went on for over half an hour, must've had about 200+ calls!

Only pity is they definitely won't call back now :pac:

To add to that, I got 00401 as CID, that Dan Jaman got above.

teddy b123

Where are they getting all your numbers from? i'd love them to this to me, seems like good craic

Dan Jaman

teddy b123 wrote: »

Where are they getting all your numbers from? i'd love them to this to me, seems like good craic

I'm not ex-D, so out of the phone book (or equiv).

Overheal

The cops should really be looking into this. Its literally been going on for years since the first time I heard it on boards.

norbert64

Overheal wrote: »

The cops should really be looking into this. Its literally been going on for years since the first time I heard it on boards.

Are they technically breaking any laws though?
AFAWK, telemarketing is still legal. Contacting unsuspecting people who aren't tech aware and conning them into buying an unnecessary service/piece of software is certainly immoral and unethical but not illegal, unfortunately.

We actually had another call ourselves this week, in the office.
I think it may have been a newbie though, as they had a very soft almost mousy like voice. I was straining at times to hear what they were saying, (never mind about the fact that they weren't a native english speaker). They gave me the usual spiel about downloading viruses when you're online and how my PC was now infected and they needed me to grant them remote access to fix it.

I just explained in a calm tone, that I was careful online and had various scanners on my PC which kept an eye on things. After about 3 minutes chatting they said, ''OK so you seem to have a good grasp of things yourself, we just wanted to make you aware of possible problems''. Then it was simply a quick thanks and goodbye from both of us.

patentseven

He was probably turfed back on to the street in Calcutta for that. So he's
"No mama, no papa, no job".

DERICKOO

patentseven wrote: »

He was probably turfed back on to the street in Calcutta for that. So he's
"No mama, no papa, no job".

Ya I hope he rots in his oil cloth. Got 2 last week from 001110 told me my name and I said you were calling from India no sir I call you from Dublin 1. She said she was from PC-DOCTOR ect my windows software was causing problems, No problem I said. Asked her could she also help me with the pain I have in my groin first, she hung up on me. That is the 100+ call I have received. This can be frightening for some people and annoying for others for me now it is a form of amusement.

dre_jspeed

Have got a few calls from them.
They were a pain at the start but then i stared to have fun with him. To get him to stop calling me, I told him all the computers in the house run Mac OS.

I miss my indian sounding phone friend :D:p

watna

Interesting article here:

http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/digital-living/5367057/Scammers-facade-of-legitimacy

A phone fraud of epidemic proportions the Consumer Affairs Ministry believes has sucked in 50,000 New Zealanders and cost up to $10 million is a result of parts of the US$47 billion Indian technology outsourcing industry having gone rancid.

The scams are being run from call centres in India by companies posing on the web as legitimate technology support businesses, that appear to be operating with impunity.

Computer technicians have been cold-calling people and telling them that their computers are infected in order to sell them "security software" and persuade them to hand over remote access to their computers. The Guardian said British frauds, identical to those targeting consumers in New Zealand, Australia and Canada, were being run from call centres in Kota – a city in northern India with a population of just over 1 million – by a man who was routing the proceeds through India's Axis Bank.

The head of New Zealand's National Cyber Crime Centre, John van den Heuvel, said it was a huge worldwide problem.

The fraudsters are understood to be renting phone numbers from Skype in order to make cheap internet calls to victims, but van den Heuvel assumed they would be doing so using stolen credit cards.

Internet users in Canada named a company, 24sevensupportpc.com, which ostensibly sells security software, and a manager, Jagjit Rekhi, who they believed to be behind the frauds in Canada. 24sevensupportpc.com's website is registered to Rekhi at an address in Kolkata (Calcutta).

Calls to the contact number on the website – which was shut down on Thursday – were answered by a fluent English speaker who said he was working for a different computer support company, Premium PC Support, in Delhi. He denied knowledge of the scam and said he did not know Rekhi. He told The Dominion Post the software firm appeared to be using his company's phone number without its permission and he would "look into it".

The Guardian reported that Britain's Metropolitan police had closed down 19 websites advertising remote computer support after complaints, but that they were popping up "like mushrooms".

It spoke to a manager at an Indian company that had registered one of the shut-down sites, who said the firm employed 400 people, about 200 of whom worked in telesales "cold calling" to generate business. He told the newspaper there had been "a couple of instances" where staff did try to influence customers to believe that they were from Microsoft.

The main method used by scammers to trick victims into believing they have a computer problem is to ask them to open a file called Windows Event Viewer that, even on properly-functioning computers, will display a list of "errors" that the scammer will then claim requires fixing.

Ad Feedback The Indian High Commission did not respond to invitations to comment on whether authorities were aware of the frauds or taking action

Cork24

Very Nice, indeed.

I do wonder is India do anything at all. i think Europe needs to give India a move of a push to do something about this Crime.

how about Not trading with them untill they catch the people behind this and put them behind bars for life. This has worked in the Past and why shouldnt it work now ? tell India US and EU, NZ ,AUS will not be trading, until those people are in jail for CyberCrime.

ART6

Cork24 wrote: »

Very Nice, indeed.

I do wonder is India do anything at all. i think Europe needs to give India a move of a push to do something about this Crime.

how about Not trading with them untill they catch the people behind this and put them behind bars for life. This has worked in the Past and why shouldnt it work now ? tell India US and EU, NZ ,AUS will not be trading, until those people are in jail for CyberCrime.

I would think that all it needs is for a number of major companies to threaten to close their call centres in India.

robinph

ART6 wrote: »

I would think that all it needs is for a number of major companies to threaten to close their call centres in India.

Then you have a load of unemployed call centre people available to work in new scam call centres.

The guys working in the scam ones do seem to have a better grasp of the English language than the ones that were working in the one for Three or various other legit company call centres that I've had reason to speak to in the past.

Cork24

Then how would we force India and its Goverment to put those people behind bars

ART6

Cork24 wrote: »

Then how would we force India and its Goverment to put those people behind bars

This thread has suggested that the call centre business is worth billions to the Indian economy. Would the Indian government really want to see the call centres closed and all of their employees to be converted to scammers as suggested earlier? That would amount to a government acceptance that they are a nation of fraudsters, and that would have much wider ramifications than call centres.

Cork24

Ok doing a Google Search
http://www.callcentersindia.com/call_center_directory.php?id=9_callcenter

could we really force 300 + Call Centers to move out of India ?

i feel the best way would to Stop Trading with india then trying to get Companys who are paying poor money to the workers just to pack up and move out of india

patentseven

There isn't any company going to pull their call centres out of India - why? because it's cheap. Also, no company is going to stop trading with India
just because a shower of bums are stealing money from gullible people. The Nigerians are at it with their 419 scam e-mails but, we will always buy their oil. It's up to the authorities here to deal with it and it seems they are unable to do anything except warn people -which they do - I bet India
have a load of our bonds.

jarvis

Just got another call there. He asked ne to turn on my pc as they are getting logs sent from my pc to say windows is corrupt. I told him I was sitting in front of my pc and he asked ne to hold while he put me through to a tech. I wasnt at my pc but was interested to see what he wanted me to do. He made me open the run comand and walked me through how to view errors on my system and I was saying 'yeah' as he called out each step. He then asked me to run www.ammyy.com as he started to initiate remote access.
When he asked me for the displayed code I couldn't answer as u wasn't actually doing it so I said " oh **** I forgot to turn mh laptop on!!" then told him it was a mac, then I don't own a pc, then told him it's a v-tech, then I dont have Internet, then asked could he start all over again, which he looked like he was willing to do!!!???
I carried on confusing him for a few more minutes until he said I was the most annoying person he has seen.
I then asked how can he see me??? Do you have CCTV in my house??? Is bill gates watching me????
When he asked why I was being so rude I told him why and I asked him to remove my number so they don't call me again as I'm never gonna fall for it. He said he will call me every day!!! I then said can he make sure it's not him, but one of his colleagues as I'd like to go through all the time wasting steps again. He hung up.
I hope they call back. It's kind fun.

Thr only weird thing is that my pc actually is playing up. Got some spyware and can't find my data partition!!!

Wonder if they can fix it. Must go to ammyy.com too.

B00MSTICK

I have one now!

Keeping him here, playing along for now!

He's on hold while I turn on router....

Still here...

Gone from logmein to ammyy

Teamviewer now..

B00MSTICK

He's gone...







but the billing department will call me later to help me further :pac:

Apparently I couldn't connect to their servers. Such a shame...
I've wasted 1hr and 20 mins of their time so far, picked a good day to be off work.

I might disconnect the hard drive and use a live linux CD, then change the desktop backround to "GO F*CK YOURSELF"

Any other suggestions?

fti

B00MSTICK wrote: »

but the billing department will call me later to help me further

I can pretty well imagine what kind of *help* a billing dpt has to offer

B00MSTICK wrote: »

I might disconnect the hard drive and use a live linux CD, then change the desktop backround to "GO F*CK YOURSELF"
Any other suggestions?

Maybe instead of displaying some explicit background why not choosing one which could make them believe you're from some law enforcement unit (something like Irish Cyber Criminality Response Squad) just to see if it has any influence on their efforts to *help* you ?

B00MSTICK

fti wrote:

Maybe instead of displaying some explicit background why not choosing one which could make them believe you're from some law enforcement unit (something like Irish Cyber Criminality Response Squad) just to see if it has any influence on their efforts to *help* you ?

Love it.

My Fedora disk is severely scratched though and the Linpus and CentOS DVDs aren't Live disks afaik...

I'll see what I can do.

fti

B00MSTICK wrote: »

Love it.

My Fedora disk is severely scratched though and the Linpus and CentOS DVDs aren't Live disks afaik...

I'll see what I can do.

I've heard about BartPE a free tool which was supposed to create live disk from your Windows install. Dunno if it still exists or even actually works.
Anyway downloading the latest Ubuntu live CD and burning a CD shouldn't take you so long (provided you are not on a isolated island using a 14.4K modem to access the Internet)