Are the “Microsoft Tech Support” phone scammers baitable

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Master Baiter Joined: 04 May 2007 Posts: 187

Just got woken up by some person-of-indefinite-parentage claiming to be from Microsoft’s technical support responding to errors on my machine… you know the drill. I strung him along for a few minute pretending to be a clueless luser until he got upset and started cussing at me & hung up.

Very unsatisfying for both of us.

Normal baiting rules say not to engage since he’s got my phone number (not my name or anything else, but still) but—has anyone successfully baited these fellows? I could use some vicarious vengeance about now.

Elite Baiter Joined: 19 Apr 2008 Posts: 1300

Hi, I've had numerous fun experiences with these guys. They tend to be short (90 minutes having the guy on the phone is my record) but possibly intense.

First off, many of them aren't lads as such. They work for (Indian mostly) internet security companies who indulge in 'scare' tactics to get you to buy their worthless and overpriced support contracts. Obviously when a real problem does occur on your PC they don't want to know.

Also they will try and arrange a remote connection to your PC using commercial tech support web sites and of course once they get that they can do what they damn well like so NOT recommended.

In general, stay clear unless you are absolutely sure of what you are doing. Phone numbers are 'mass mailed' so I wouldn't worry if they phoned you - just means they got lucky from their viewpoint.

Baiting Guru Joined: 10 Oct 2010 Posts: 3876

you can mess around with them.

it's harder to mess around with them safely.

basically, you first need to have a phone number not connected to your real life. maybe voip, maybe a prepaid mobile phone. then, you need this scammer to call you on this line. and here is where the trouble starts: how do they find their victims? calling just the whole number-range, or do they have databases and so? if yes, how does the baiter insert the phone number in there...

next step, you don't want this lad to mess around with your regular computer. an old one, running on linux, with VMware or virtualbox installed (for the windows system), and let the scammer mess around in there. at some point, he will demand you to install team viewer or something like this so he can mess around directly (installing nasty things).

you should also take precautions for sealing this computer from your network. sometimes routers offer a DMZ-feature (demilitarized zone), where the DMZ-machine can't reach the rest of the network. guest networks sometimes work equally good.

a good advice at this point: take snapshots of the system. unaltered and maybe altered too. you can revert back to them later, causing much confusion.

your lad calls, and then it's up to you, if you have time for him or not. they are quite often from india, so you can set an appointment for a convenient time (best is, convenient for you, inconvenient for him, for example if you are us-west coast, 15 o'clock translates to 4:30 am for him. (If I'm not mistaken, because the time difference is 13h30).

I read about people, who messed around with them for hours, using virtual machines, but they didn't do it the safe way.

and they are not advance fee fraud (although, if he wants the money in advance?)

Posted: Thu Nov 19, 2015 1:21 pm

In the last year I've received at least 4 calls from either Microsoft Support stating I have a virus or the IRS saying I'm being foreclosed upon. I try to string them along and gain any intel I can on them. I write down the type of scam, Phone Number they are calling from (If Possible), And ask for a number to call back if we should get cutoff. All the above gets posted to the warning site so if someone Googles the Phone numbers they will know it's a scam.

I think the reason they are calling me so much now is that my RL phone number has made it to some "Sucker" list somewhere. They seem to like calling me about 9AM on Saturday EDT.

Posted: Thu Nov 19, 2015 1:32 pm

I string them on enough to ask what do see now. I reply " Your mums video boobies she sent"

Posted: Thu Nov 19, 2015 2:18 pm

Robert Heinrich der 1. wrote:

you can mess around with them.

it's harder to mess around with them safely.

.....and they are not advance fee fraud....

These are all important points. This kind of phone-based fraud is outside of the remit of 419eater (see also "IRS scams" and other questionable telemarketing stuff) so we are discouraging posting of such baits here.

Posted: Thu Nov 19, 2015 2:49 pm

I was beat to the punch by firehouse5. I would add some additional points.

As defined in the FAQs and concerning Eater:

Quote:

Scambaiting is an attempt to slow the effectiveness of 419 scammers. Scambaiters draw the scammer into a game of their own for as long as possible. The more of the scammer's time, energy and resources we can waste, the less he will have to scam a potential real victim.

These types of scams are not 419 (advanced fee fraud) scammers. How much time, energy, and resources can you truly waste. Sure, you can burn 90 minutes of their time, but my second point is more important.

We bait safe here. Answer one of these calls and your phone number, likely one connected to your real life, is now flagged as valid and someone who will answer. Prepare yourself for more incoming calls, from different numbers, and at the most inconvenient time. Whose time is really being wasted now?

Posted: Thu Nov 19, 2015 4:37 pm

bware419ers wrote:

Sure, you can burn 90 minutes of their time, but...

Although I agree 100% with bware's post, I just feel the need to make one other point...

When you burn 90 minutes of a tech support scammer's time, you're also wasting 90 minutes of your own. The point of baiting is to make a scammer spend his time and money to meet your fictitious requirements or needs. (Ex: a two minute email asking a scammer to fill out a form can turn into hours of work for him.) Spending an hour on the phone with some tech scammer idiot may be fun once or twice, but it's not something I'd want to do on a regular basis.

Posted: Thu Nov 19, 2015 5:05 pm

^^^I realize it was TLDR...

bware419ers wrote:

Whose time is really being wasted now?

Baiting Guru Joined: 10 Oct 2010 Posts: 3876

@firehouse5: I know, yet it is a bad idea to let a member of this board run into an open knife. so my conclusio is: it's rather hard to bait them and the reward is low. but if he wants to do it, he should do it safely.

regarding the time investment: yes, 90 minutes of him is 90 minutes of you. but... he can decide when he wants to call. he has no other appointment (only the next victim), whereas the baiter might have something else to do (lad steals baiters time).

Posted: Thu Nov 19, 2015 7:48 pm

Robert Heinrich der 1. wrote:

@firehouse5: I know, yet it is a bad idea to let a member of this board run into an open knife. so my conclusio is: it's rather hard to bait them and the reward is low. but if he wants to do it, he should do it safely.

Robert, just to expand on what you suggested earlier, the key is to bait safely regardless of what format you bait. For this particular format, I would grab their contact information and ask whoever is calling you to give you their direct line so that you can call them back. Then contact them via whatever number you safely bait from (i.e. not connected to your real life number.)

The next issue is to use a name that is so common that it will be in their database or will not trigger a twig. That is only if they are using a database. Some of these guys will not even talk to you if you are not on their database. They will either hang up on you or phish for your information to put in their database. If they don't try to cross reference the name you give them to their database then use whatever name you want, but I try to give them the most common first name/last name combinations to guarantee a hit on their database. This is a list of the most common first name/last name combinations in the U.S.:

James Smith
Michael Smith
Robert Smith
Maria Garcia
David Smith
Maria Rodriguez
Mary Smith
Maria Hernandez
Maria Martinez
James Johnson

Once you get past this point, I have found that the safest way to bait these lads after they accept you as a mugu (or whatever the Indian equivalent is) is to bait them without a computer in front of you and constantly tell them they are yelling at you (even if they are not) and you do not appreciate it.

Whatever they tell you to do on your computer, let them know it is not working and blame it on them and attack their customer service skills or pretend that you have a disability that will frustrate them and get them to do a lot of work and be extra patient. If they ask you to do something online, give them error codes and let them figure out your imaginary problem on your non-existent computer. Here is a list of error codes you can give them as a trail of bread crumbs as they come up with innovative solutions to fix your imaginary problem:

http://www.w3schools.com/tags/ref_httpmessages.asp

Just give them the error number and let them figure out the rest. Once they think they have the problem solved keep feeding them different error messages which indicate that the problem is on their end.

A couple of helpful hints, these lads are in effect telemarketers and pissing them off and making them impatient and short does have a lasting effect as it frustrates them and carries over to the next person they deal with. As such, it does have an aggregate effect on their ability to con other people in the database.

Also it is worth noting that this is a different species of lad than their Nigerian counterparts. In order to bait them effectively you have to understand that going in. They are relatively sharp and they have put me in the position where I had to think on my feet to give a satisfactory answer. However the principles of baiting them (i.e. bait safe, frustrate them, de-educate when possible, blame things on them, make them do work, and waste their time) are the same. The trick is to straight bait them until they lose it and make them do all the work. Hope that helped.

Posted: Thu Nov 19, 2015 8:35 pm

firehouse5 wrote:

This kind of phone-based fraud is outside of the remit of 419eater (see also "IRS scams" and other questionable telemarketing stuff) so we are discouraging posting of such baits here.

But I see we continue to discuss it? Confused

Baiting Guru Joined: 10 Oct 2010 Posts: 3876

@modokmind

very interesting idea. the real life phone number is the catcher-account, and just by telling them, that you want to call back, they have to reply with a phone number. and then go the safe-bait-route. simple and effective. especially with a few days in between.

and not having a pc at all is a nice idea too. I like it.

on the other hand, I know about people who let dem access a VM. the lad did then a lot of changes and installed several tools. and then, the lad asked the victim to reboot the pc.

at this point, the baiter reverted to an earlier snapshot of the VM. it's hard to describe how confused and pissed the lads were who saw that all their hard work vanished.

I'm just not sure how many of them already know about jokers in that type of scam...

Posted: Fri Nov 20, 2015 12:17 am

Quote:

But I see we continue to discuss it? Confused

This kind of thing would never have happened when SOOI was in charge. He'd have banned half a dozen members by now and demoted f5 to litter tray duty for failing to lock the thread.

Posted: Fri Nov 20, 2015 1:33 am

^Yet you Bump the thread? Am McLovin' this!

Posted: Fri Nov 20, 2015 1:41 am

Some of these clowns have your real life information. One even know about a legit tech support call that I initiated and the replacement hardware that was shipped.

If they call on you RL phone my advice is just hang up.

Posted: Fri Nov 20, 2015 1:44 am

Capone wrote:

Oh, FFS.

Locking.

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