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

tricky D

I'm still wasting this idiot's time for the last 15 minutes. I strung him along innocently for the first 5 minutes playing dumb and then wanted to watch the end of the Tour de France so told him I'm wasting his time. Cue 10 minutes of explicit insults and threats. I'm now telling him his boss will be unhappy letting me waste his time and that at least it means less scam time for him and he just keeps on coming. Oh well he's finally hung up. I eagerly await him coming this evening to do all sorts of unmentionables to me and my mother and father who is well dead. Must get a recording next time. Fun times.

Sam Mac

tricky D wrote: »

I'm still wasting idiots time for the last 15 minutes. I strung him along innocently for the first 5 minutes playing dumb and then wanted to watch the end of the Tour de France so told him I'm wasting his time. Cue 10 minutes of explicit insults and threats. I'm now telling him his boss will be unhappy letting me waste his time and that at least it means less scam time for him and he just keeps on coming. Oh well he's finally hung up. I eagerly await him coming this evening to do all sorts of unmentionables to me and my mother and father who is well dead. Must get a recording next time. Fun times.

Yes, please record it next time, love these calls!

nice_guy80

I string them along for a few minutes then ask them what is the internet? whats a laptop or PC?

Mearings

Quote:
Originally Posted by gaius c
Whatever you do, don't engage with them and counter-troll them back.
My dad did this and now the parents are getting 10-20 calls a day from 002084480024 and there's nobody on the other end of the line.

002084480024

I had a call from this number this afternoon, waited 3 seconds of silence, just as I had decided to hang up the speil began but too late; just as well having read gaius above.

Irishgoatman

As I've said on this thread before, if I pick up without looking at the number of the incoming call and it's one of these scams I always wind them up.
I've certainly never been aware of receiving more calls because of it.

The fact is that I now very rarely get scam calls and I really miss not having someone to extract the urine from:D.

BeerSteakBirds

Mearings wrote: »

Whatever you do, don't engage with them and counter-troll them back.
My dad did this and now the parents are getting 10-20 calls a day from 002084480024 and there's nobody on the other end of the line.

002084480024
.

just block the number and you win , right ?

Recondite49

Irishgoatman wrote: »

As I've said on this thread before, if I pick up without looking at the number of the incoming call and it's one of these scams I always wind them up.
I've certainly never been aware of receiving more calls because of it.

The fact is that I now very rarely get scam calls and I really miss not having someone to extract the urine from:D.

I think you've the right idea my friend. Whenever I tried to tell them I'm a Linux user, they just keep talking, trying to claim I need to allow them to connect to my machine.

The difficult part for me when working in Tech Support is that sometimes people do pay up then call my company claiming it was us they spoke to.

Usually when they call it's because they've received a scam call and just wanted to check it was us. If money has changed hands however things can get ugly.

Usually my company is blamed for "allowing" these kind of calls to occur, as if we had any control over it!

VG31

I got a fake call from 'Windows support' (a man with an Indian accent) telling about problems with Windows. The number he rang from had the +855 code (for Cambodia). The name he gave was not Indian. My home number is not in the directory.

Is there anywhere I can report this? Thanks.

degsie

There is a huge thread already covering this stuff. As for reporting it, you just have

tim9002

I've got these in the past and once when I had nothing better to do I screwed around with him for a good ten minutes before he hung up. Maybe I stopped someone else getting done!

leeroybrown

Unless he knew some details about you it was probably either an auto dialler that randomly selected your number or just the guy manually trying a range of numbers one at a time. I know someone who's wife got stung by one of these guys. The credit card details had been given out and the money was gone before he could deal with it. Absolutely nothing you can do about the calls bar ignoring them.

yoyo

Threads merged.

srsly78

leeroybrown wrote: »

The credit card details had been given out and the money was gone before he could deal with it. Absolutely nothing you can do about the calls bar ignoring them.

It's not too late in such a case. Just ring card provider and tell them of the fraud, money will be returned.

Fuzzy Clam

leeroybrown wrote: »

Unless he knew some details about you it was probably either an auto dialler that randomly selected your number or just the guy manually trying a range of numbers one at a time. I know someone who's wife got stung by one of these guys. The credit card details had been given out and the money was gone before he could deal with it. Absolutely nothing you can do about the calls bar ignoring them.

they've known my name in the past. They always asked for me by my first name but with "Mr" in front. E.g. Mr Fuzzy.
They must be getting lists from somewhere.

They're getting more abusive too.

leeroybrown

srsly78 wrote: »

It's not too late in such a case. Just ring card provider and tell them of the fraud, money will be returned.

In his case he did manage to get the money back eventually.

Fuzzy Clam wrote: »

they've known my name in the past. They always asked for me by my first name but with "Mr" in front. E.g. Mr Fuzzy.
They must be getting lists from somewhere.

They're getting more abusive too.

You can buy contact lists like that online at $x per 1000 people. A lot of the information leaks where websites are hacked end up being sold on as one of these lists. Your name, e-mail, number, etc probably ended up in one of these lists like that.

lionela

Had several of these calls over time and told them each to get lost.
However my OH answered one particular guy who I found later to be calling from Cambodia.
She told him that she already noticed the computer was a bit poorly and sluggish and told this geek that she put 2 paracetamal tablets in the disc tray ...closed the tray and after a few crunching noises the computer was running fine and obviously must have had a Virus and she cured it herself.

I nearly **** myself laughting when she told me that.

The guy on the other end of the line just hung up.......I wonder did he laugh too.

Mec-a-nic

leeroybrown wrote: »

Absolutely nothing you can do about the calls bar ignoring them.

Actually, there is one thing that absolutely works - I did it last week. We moved house and when transferring the landline/DSL we just cancelled the landline completely.
After 12 years, I realised we only ever got scam/poll calls on it, and I'd finally run out of fun in stringing along both these types of call.

Recondite49

Mec-a-nic wrote: »

Actually, there is one thing that absolutely works - I did it last week. We moved house and when transferring the landline/DSL we just cancelled the landline completely.
After 12 years, I realised we only ever got scam/poll calls on it, and I'd finally run out of fun in stringing along both these types of call.

Hi mec-a-nic,

Pleased to hear you've been able to cut them off for good, I notice you said you still have DSL so I take it you have the landline but have simply dispensed with the telephone? I know my phone line has a number but since it's only attached to the modem, I don't know what it is, naturally if anyone wants to get in touch they have your mobile.

Mearings

Recondite49 wrote: »

Hi mec-a-nic,

Pleased to hear you've been able to cut them off for good, I notice you said you still have DSL so I take it you have the landline but have simply dispensed with the telephone? I know my phone line has a number but since it's only attached to the modem, I don't know what it is, naturally if anyone wants to get in touch they have your mobile.

No overseas calls then?

Recondite49

Mearings wrote: »

No overseas calls then?

I prefer to use Skype for my international calls, much cheaper!

Steviemoyne

If I ever get any of these calls I'm going to answer by saying "Hi, you're through to eircom technical support. Can I take your account number please".

Jocelynel

hi guys,

can i ask you for some help? my mother got a phone call from one of these 'window' scam yesterday. They had her name. She gave them her address aswell as 'numbers'!?!?. She said this person navigated her a section of her computer and told her to call out these numbers. Could it be the IP address. I'm sorry for being so vague...but I hoping someone will know what numbers from the PC they might have been targeting.

Thankfully she refused to give them the VISA card information and she doesn't have internet banking.

I don't know where to go from here...

any help would be very much appreciated

bonzodog2

You might check the internet browser history. If they don't have CC details, she didn't install anything, and no 'net banking she's probably safe.

But to reassure her, get malwarebytes, update and run in safe mode.

Also make sure she has uptodate regular AV running. But not 2! That slows things down.

Also Windows updates.

Jocelynel

That's great, i forgot about checking the internet browser history, i can tell then if she down loaded anything, that's what I'm afraid of.
Ah these scams are awful. I've told my mum to leave the laptop off until I get down to her tomorrow

THANK YOU :-)

havetoquit

Lots of people are getting these calls and the advice I received is; As soon as you you pick up the phone; Let the caller speak for a few seconds to verify that it is nobody you know, then simply put the receiver on a table and let them chat to themselves! It is one way of warding off more calls.

Hope this helps.

brightspark

Kept one on for almost an hour before I got bored.

After the first half hour, just when I was supposed to have downloaded the software, I hung up, when he rang back I blamed it on a power cut!

We have a terrible electricity supply here, failed another couple of times, just as the software should have downloaded.

When I got bored I asked him did he think everyone in Ireland was a fool? He made some remark my mother :rolleyes: and then hung up.

I wonder are they on commission? Background noise sounded like a busy call centre, do they get fired if they don't reach their targets?

Snickers Man

Have had dozens of calls over past few years from people claiming to be "Windows Support Centre" Always Indian accents. Always from international numbers which never stay on my LCD display long enough for me to jot them down.

Just a few minutes ago I got one from someone claiming to be from "Microsoft Technical Support" Which is a new and daring ploy. I hung up on him after a few seconds but it's a bit blatant of them actually using Microsoft's name.

I would have thought.

Seriously, does anyone know of some sort of reporting strategy or people I could call to follow up on this? And maybe if there was some information perhaps it could be put in a "Sticky"?

Just a suggestion. Who's going to read through 40+ pages of posts?

chka

I never had such calls and my windows have a problem: the glass broke couple of days ago. Can they fix it? ;-)

Recondite49

chka wrote: »

I never had such calls and my windows have a problem: the glass broke couple of days ago. Can they fix it? ;-)

Must have been a real pane... aha ha ha... :-D

Gadgetman496

Recondite49 wrote: »

Must have been a real pane... aha ha ha... :-D

I printed that and framed it...... Ha Ha Ha!