"Microsoft" scammers

[Tom]

Just been to a mate's house (he's 70) to fix his computer. Apparently one of these "technicians" phoned him up (from India) and told him his system was infected, blah blah blah. The interesting part is that he somehow used XP's remote access function to change things around. He used the mouse pointer to highlight to my friend exactly what was "wrong" with his system.

Some other things he did:

Removed the AV software
Added some kind of bullshit malware install file to the desktop
Took a screenshot of the normal desktop
Set the desktop image to display that screenshot
Unchecked the "view desktop icons" shortcut you get when right-clicking the desktop, so he had a normal looking screen full of icons that weren't icons

Fortunately my mate isn't stupid enough to give his CC details to "fix" the problem, so now I've fixed it up, disabled remote access, password protected the system, installed new AV and removed the new and interesting exceptions from the firewall, things should be ok. Malwarebytes found about 50 dodgy files, although some of those were probably unrelated.

I told him the next time they phone, to tell them to fuck themselves.

 

[throdgrain]

They are fucking wankers . I had one on the phone once for 20 minutes, in the end he realised I was winding me up and started abusing me - " I earn more money than you doing this" etc etc. Christ I gave him some shit

 

[TdC]

one of the wankers phoned my mum up once. she's pushing 80 but thank jeebus had the presence of mind to tell them to go fuck themselves *proud*

 

[TdC]

you've triggered me to fire off a quick email to her for a quick spell of reminding the Teedlemum that no company will ever ever ever call her and tell her to do things -she has to call THEM before this could ever be a legit scenario. She'll prolly chew my ear off tomorrow for telling her things she already knows but it pays to be careful

 

[Billargh]

They've tried that shit with my mam before on multiple occasions, they choke so bad when she passed the phone over to someone (me) who knew their way around a computer.

 

[Lakih]

From experience (talking to customers) they use Teamviewer (www.teamviewer.com) to connect, same remote connection program we use at work. I had one call me the other week, I was playing along and acting all stupid with the first lady (indian) who called so she transferred me to her superior who spoke good and clear English. After playing with him for a while I got bored and told him I had a Mac. All of a sudden they had the wrong number
Wish I had pushed more for knowing where they got my number from... just to hear what story they would try to pull.

Also the first lady said she called from Windows... I died a little inside at that.

 

[Billargh]

They genuinely started insulting me after calling them out on their bullshit.

 

[Access Denied]

I had someone call a couple of months ago. Same deal. Kept her on the line for 45 minutes before she figured out I was winding her up. Amused me greatly.

 

[BloodOmen]

Cock roaches.

 

[Kryten]

I've been waiting nearly a year for someone to do this to me, either at work or home. On both machines I have a windows VM installed "prime for the messin'" and a speech recorder for the whole thing. Alas, nothing

 

[Embattle]

They did this to my mum a while a go, however I have guided her about various scams so she knew it was scam and that since I sort her computer it was unlikely to have a problem.

 

[Job]

They are doing a great service to Britain..because of them no one trusts Indian call centres and makes companies move back to the UK...all the staff are Indian here of course..but thats anothr thing.

 

[TdC]

I've been waiting nearly a year for someone to do this to me, either at work or home. On both machines I have a windows VM installed "prime for the messin'" and a speech recorder for the whole thing. Alas, nothing

yeah mate, when you wait for it...never happens eh

 

[Aada]

Any reason any of you haven't just put the phone down as soon as you hear why they are calling? Never had one of these calls myself but if I get any type of sales call or anything like that phone goes straight down.

 

[Access Denied]

Any reason any of you haven't just put the phone down as soon as you hear why they are calling? Never had one of these calls myself but if I get any type of sales call or anything like that phone goes straight down.

Because it's fun to mess with them?

 

[Raven]

We are ex-directory and registered as not wanting nuisance calls but the odd one slips through. It's fun to get salesman to list and explain their products and then just waste their time. My wife just says to them, I'll just get my husband and then just leaves the phone on the table.

 

[Zarjazz]

We are ex-directory and registered as not wanting nuisance calls but the odd one slips through.

This particular scam typically calls direct from India, they don't care about you being on the TPS list and often just carpet bomb a range of numbers. There isn't much that Ofcom or EU regulators can do about that kind of call as it's outside their legal powers.

 

[Lakih]

Just got another call from them. This time I was prepared.
I locked down a virtual machine so it was more or less useless. Installed Teamviewer and locked it down aswell so they could connect but not actually do anything. Started Wireshark logging. I played along for a good half hour just so see if I could get him frustrated... it worked.
After letting him try and do anything for half an hour I asked him if he knew who Kim Akers is (MS fictitious test person) or why my computers name was Contoso (MS fictitious test company). He didn't. When I told him he started crying saying that we have stolen from them (India) since 1947 and now they where trying to steal back. So I abused him for a few more minutes before he offered me a job (he wanted my home address so he could send me the application). After a few more minutes of abuse he hung up on me, he had other customers to help.

Didn't get a lot of useful info out of him except his IP-address... 103.31.189.250 It is located in India and responds to ping

 

[Raven]

Contoso

They make excellent AV equipment!

 

[Syri]

Because it's fun to mess with them?

Exactly that. I've had a couple of calls from them. One of them I told him my machine ran linux. The other I asked which PC, so he gave me an IP of 192.168.0.2 (my router doesn't use that range) so I told him it was my printer's IP, and he got a little bit confused...

 

[Gwadien]

I work in sales atm - making monies for dah uni life, ex-directory means youre not in the phone book, we can still annoy you, TPS is different and we abide by it (ofc) but youll be amazed the amount of people that claim to be TPS but actually are not.

 

[BloodOmen]

Are there no services where you can decline/opt out of receiving calls from specific places e.g India, has to be something like that surely that just out right blocks an entire country from ringing you. Perhaps something you can request from your phone provider?

 

[Zarjazz]

Are there no services where you can decline/opt out of receiving calls from specific places e.g India, has to be something like that surely that just out right blocks an entire country from ringing you. Perhaps something you can request from your phone provider?

That's incredibly difficult for a carrier to do in this situation for a number of technical reasons. The first one being it's very easy to spoof a caller id, which a lot of these spammers do, and make themselves look like they a dialling from the local country.

The simplest option is to get an app for your phone that can black list numbers so if you get a call from that number again it's automatically rejected.

 

[BloodOmen]

That's incredibly difficult for a carrier to do in this situation for a number of technical reasons. The first one being it's very easy to spoof a caller id, which a lot of these spammers do, and make themselves look like they a dialling from the local country.

The simplest option is to get an app for your phone that can black list numbers so if you get a call from that number again it's automatically rejected.

Hrmm k

 

[Olgaline]

I had one recently at work

imagine a thick indian accent for him and a bad danish accent for me:

[Caller]: Hello sir,
[Caller]: I'm calling from microsoft help center ok?
[Caller]: Now listen ok ?
[Caller]: I've been done a standard scan on your windows system ok ? and we've found some malware ok?
[Me:] Ehm ok, sounds bad
[Caller]: Dont worry sir, we will sort you out quickly ok ?
[Me:] starts to chuckle "damnit!"
[Caller]: Sir, this is no joke, do you want me to help you or not sir?
[Me:] Sorry, it's just that...we dont use Windows.....
[Caller]: ...................... ............. ..............beep beep beep

Spoiler

We actually do use windows

 

[Edmond]

I'm ex directory and on the TPS and the only calls i ever get are from SKY and thats genuinely to do with my account. I have however started getting the PPI calls to my mobile in the last few weeks

They start going on about the loans i have had (never had one) and finance (never had any) its all bollocks but i listen along for a bit all the same

 

[Gwadien]

PPI is a brilliant way of making easy cash though, I have a friend who does them calls and the figures are eye watering, since you can claim PPI by saying to your bank 'are you sure'?

 

[Zarjazz]

I have however started getting the PPI calls to my mobile in the last few weeks.

This is down to the fact that the wholesale rate for mobile calls has dropped in the last year or so, so they are cheaper to dial in bulk and that most people don't realise you can also add your mobile to the TPS list. Basically its now more economical for these PPI companies to ring you on your mobile.

I have a friend who does them calls and the figures are eye watering

If I could only tell you how many of these calls our customers make a day that would really scare you.

 

[Edmond]

Is there money to be had from it though?

 

[Gwadien]

Is there money to be had from it though?

Yes, you contact the bank of your client, saying 'can he have his PPI back?' Bank says 'Yes.' you get like 10% or w/e your rates are.