New here but have encountered email & Telephone scams

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Hello I'm New here! Joined: 12 Mar 2013 Posts: 3

I am not sure where to post this or if this is the proper forum but I did receive a call from someone calling themselves a rep of Microsoft who told me Microsoft was receiving error messages from my computer and he would help me fix them.

I am tech savy and I had great time over the course of a few days with these guys calling me back to "fix my computer". I wasted about 3 of their hours and whatever telephone cost and I really don't think in the end that they suspected they were being played they just wanted out of trying to deal with this "old stupid grandma" who couldn't figure out how to give them remote control of my computer. In the end I finally put it to rest by figuring out that I had a dial-up connection and only one telephne line in the house and I was talking to them on it.

Their objective of course is to have you give them remote control of your computer "to fix it" and they will try and have you pay them to do but the end game is access to your information. If you are comfortable with tech and playing dumb you can and will frustrate these guys if you do it well you can keep them coming back a few times.

Hope this is the correct place to post if not let me know

Posted: Wed Mar 13, 2013 10:33 am

Not a 419/Advance Fee Fraud, but a very nasty scam.
Be careful when playing with them as they have your phone number (= RL information). If you want them to stop bothering you, you can tell them, that your PC hardware is damaged beyond repair (blue smoke, sparks ... than silence).
You have no money to buy a new one and will live without a PC from now on.

The 'No Money' part is important to tell them you will never pay.

Posted: Wed Mar 13, 2013 11:04 am

Another way to frustrate them is to have a Linux or BSD box, with full KDE or Gnome GUI, but not tell them. Their instructions won't match what you see on screen (there's a button you hit to get a menu, but it's a K-gear or foot button, not a Start button), but it's close enough that you can keep them tied up for a while.

Posted: Wed Mar 13, 2013 11:29 am

I used to get those phone calls alot. I would pretend to be a little old lady telling them that her windows are fine but they need a clean. Will the man on the phone clean them. This would go on for ages back and forth.

However the new scam here is to phone your number and hang up. The number looks legit but when you ring it back it connects you to a sex line in a far distant country. The trick here is they have added a extra 0 to the number yet it is very close to a mobile number here. So instead off the number being 099 xxxxxxxx its 0099 xxxxxxxx.

And then you are billed for it.

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