I have now received about 10 of these calls. Gentlemen with heavy Indian accents who are very persistent, even brusque if you try to ask questions, and when you hang up they may even call back in an hour or so. To me, its comical, with flashes of impatience/annoyance thrown in as the clown on the other end talks utter nonsense, but finally, curious after religiously hanging up on these guys, I did a search on their obvious scam. I thought it might be informational for others and maybe even worth a laugh.

 

Below is an excerpt from one of the articles I read. You can find the rest here: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/10/i-am-calling-you-from-windows-a-tech-support-scammer-dials-ars-technica/

 

Good luck!! 

 

When the call came yesterday morning, I assumed at first I was being trolled—it was just too perfect to be true. My phone showed only "Private Caller" and, when I answered out of curiosity, I was connected to "John," a young man with a clear Indian accent who said he was calling from "Windows Technical Support." My computer, he told me, had alerted him that it was infested with viruses. He wanted to show me the problem—then charge me to fix it.

This scam itself is a few years old now, but I had not personally received one of the calls until yesterday—the very day that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced a major crackdown on such "boiler room" call center operations. The very day that six civil lawsuits were filed against the top practitioners. The very day on which I had just finished speaking with Ars IT reporter Jon Brodkin, who spent the morning on an FTC conference call about this exact issue. And here were the scammers on the other end of the line, in what could only be a cosmic coincidence.

I walked around my office with the phone against my ear, then settled into my desk chair and put the call on speakerphone. I wanted to know just what it felt like to be on the receiving end of such a call. I wanted to know how a group of scammers half a world away convinced random and often tech-illiterate people to do things like run the built-in Windows Event Viewer, then connect to a website, download software, and install it (together, no easy feat for many mainstream users). I wanted to know just how the scammers eventually convinced their marks to open up remote control of their PCs to strangers who had just called them on the telephone.

So I played along—which was difficult without a Windows PC in my office. To buy time, I told the scammer that I was waiting for my nonexistent computer to "boot up," then sent a furious blast of instant messages to Brodkin, asking him to do whatever the scammer told me to do and report back on the results. Luckily he was at his computer and immediately agreed—and we were off.

 

 

In this video, the scammers actually get mad and remotely delete a persons computer!

 

They are idiots just tell them get a real job like the rest of up and hangup lol

They are idiots just tell them get a real job like the rest of up and hangup lol

It was on my mind since the latest call was about a half hour before I started this thread.....

Very helpful service......NOT  :rolleyes:

I get them calling here in Australia too.

 

In fact, for a short time I used to work in the Australian Government "Do not call register" inbound call centre for the ACMA. I'd estimate about 50% or more of complaints recieved were about these type of things.

 

Unfortunatley these scammers tend to be based overseas in the likes of Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, and even parts of Africa and China. Basically if you can think of a place with economical issues and lack of law without particularly close ties with interpol and high levels of corruption, you will probably find a scam call centre there.

 

They also tend to call using VOIP, and even prepaid mobiles which are regularly scrapped. So that their phone number is regularly recycled.

 

The strange thing is that in general their business model doesn't even make sense. Call some person, and when they start to play "troll the scammer" half of these dimwits will just move into threatening and harrassing behavior which wastes potentially hours of their time. If someone's intelligent enough to see through the scam, the business minded type person would just hang up and try another person, because you obviously aren't going to be making money off the troll, only wasting time you could be using trying another potentially more sucessful scam on someone else.

 

Instead they hang around on the phone and swear and threaten people. Hey dude, I live in Australia. If you need to do this for a crust, I don't think you will be visiting me any time soon. Flights from Pakistan to Australia cost loads of cash.

 

My preferred method is the hangup. They usually only get one word out of me. "Hello?"
Then when they start talking, I know exactly what they want, and quietly hang up.

 

When the call back in a minute they get exactly the same treatment.

 

It costs them more to make a new call than just abuse me on the phone, so hopefully the reduction in phone credit by calling someone who is unresponsive over and over will eventually make that particular individual stop trying. If not, I'm happy to waste their phone credit through their repeat calls.

 

Is it illegal for them to make these kinds of calls?
Well it's not illegal to call someone on the telephone, but it is illegal to hack and commit fraud and steal, which is what they are trying to do. 

But just like a speeding fine, It's not illegal till you get caught.

And most locations where these scammers are based tend to have a corrupt justice system anyway.

And even when you catch a few, you have to remember all you need to do this kind of thing is a telephone, a computer, and a little desperation.

 

These scammers are the homeless street beggars of cyberspace. (and in some cases, they can make more money than legitimate professions)

 

 

My preferred method is the hangup. They usually only get one word out of me. "Hello?"
Then when they start talking, I know exactly what they want, and quietly hang up.

 

Yah, I smell obvious scam and usually just hang up before getting much beyond "hello" But this time I got curious, as they actually called twice yesterday, and the second time I let them go on a bit. Very aggressive when I started asking questions, and practically ordered me to start up my computer and start following instructions. Then I told him to never call me again and hung up.

They tried this with me about 3 to 4 years ago.  I let them run through all there crap right up to the point where they told me to install team viewer. Then I told him to go f*%k himself.  I`d all ready read an article in a PC magazine about it a few months prior.

 

My wifes dad is an Microsoft technician and IT consultant. They tried it with him and it backfired spectacularly on the guy on the phone. He let them in with team viewer onto an old machine he had laying around, but then installed some very nasty stuff on scammers machine.  :lol:

 

These people are praying on the vulnerable. The worst thing is they are never or rarely caught.  I was called from a number in Wales UK but the guy had a very strong Indian accent and was probably piggybacking via VOIP and running up some poor householders phone bill.

 

Doogie

I periodically get calls from "Cardholder's Services" advising me that they can 'help lower my credit card debt.'

 

The irony is that I don't have any credit cards, and owe no one a dime...

 

Even more ironic is that because I have no debt at all, my credit rating at all three major bureaus is "Poor..." Quite literally, I couldn't even finance a pack of matches! :LMAO:

Just tell the Indian scammers that you have a Mac, then ask them to fix a problem with it remotley.  That will get rid of them.

 

Oh and if you want to block these 'overseas' voip calls then get a dedicated call blocker like this one I bought 3 months ago. No more scam calls for me.....

 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/CPR-Global-CPR106-All-in-One-Blocker/dp/B004BTVQ5E