con artists that phone you to put a virus on your computer

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nick123

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My life is complete now. I've now been contacted by one of those dodgy con artists that talk you through going to a website and installing a virus then charging you to remove it.
I got the call this morning at work the bloke sounded like he was in a call centre he started with some long winded speech about my broadband had slowed down and my computer was sending errors and he was either calling on behalf of my ISP or he was my ISP i can`t remember, this went on for a while.

He then asked how many computers do I have here?

I replied two (we have loads more than that but i thought it sounds better saying only two)

dodgy bloke: what colour is the nearest computer

Me: White, no hold on its sort of cream coloured

dodgy bloke: can you switch it on please

Me: Ok, do you want me to insert the floppy?

Dodgy bloke: No don’t insert any disks

Me: Ok, so what do you want me to do then?

dodgy bloke: Go on to the internet

Me: How? I don't think I can go on the internet from here


Dodgy bloke: What is the make of your computer.

Me: Commodore Amiga

He put the phone down straight away

we don’t have any amigas at work and i was actually sitting in front of a PC . after the call i thought of other things I could have said but you are caught by surprise when you get the call!


 
Had two of these calls now claiming to be from Microsoft re our Windows computer. Surely this is illegal?
Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.3.5; en-gb; HTC_DesireHD Build/GRJ90) AppleWebKit/533.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/533.1
 
fitzsteve said:
Had two of these calls now claiming to be from Microsoft re our Windows computer. Surely this is illegal?
Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.3.5; en-gb; HTC_DesireHD Build/GRJ90) AppleWebKit/533.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/533.1
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yep totally agree its got to be illegal but im guessing the call i got and the calls you got probably were made from another country which must make it hard to police.

i really wish i had asked for the guys number i could have given the excuse my phone line drops calls all the time and if i loose the call i could phone him back but i just didn't think of this at the time. i guess he wouldn't have given the number as its scam. obviously if i had got the number i would have advertised it on forums so others could do there worst with equivalent of the readers digest mailing list when you on it there no escape!!
 
direktorn said:
i wish you had it on tape, would have been hilarious to listen to :)
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This evening i did think of this also my mobile phone was on my desk i could have set it to camera / video mode and hit record, you wouldn’t have got any video but you would have got audio. But if you see the company i work for its very small and one of the directors sits opposite me if i had put the phone on hands free to record it all you would have heard was him butting in saying yes we are having internet problems and trying to argue with me, as i don’t think he would have got it was fraud which was going on. He did seem interested when i told him after the guy hung up on me tho.
 
I'll say Amstrad CPC for my next call I think :thumbsup:

Keep the caller on hold and defeaned by tape load, oh yeh :roll::D
 
I posted somewhere else in Amibay about these calls some time ago. I've had a fair few in the last year. Really annoying, especially as I'm often cooking dinner or doing something with my son, and have to stop to answer.

I got really annoyed the last time they rang and actually tried to find out if the guy knew he was trying to scam me. I think he genuinely thought he was performing the service he was pretending to. Mad.

I did a lot of research into these calls after that. Basically the whole thing is run by one guy whom is wanted but can't be traced. He runs the scam from Indian call centres. They use voip, so it costs them nothing to ring English speaking people in any other country (mainly uk targeted). This also means it's really hard to trace the calls from your landline.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk HD
 
There's a video of a good one on Youtube, guy keeps the scammer on for a few minutes with his Spectrum!
 
Harrison said:
I got really annoyed the last time they rang and actually tried to find out if the guy knew he was trying to scam me. I think he genuinely thought he was performing the service he was pretending to. Mad.
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I tried this once. I was in a foul mood and I had a right go at the guy. He genuinely believed (or was a very good at acting) that he was selling a genuine service. And whilst a horribly shonky way of doing things, it is remotely possible that someone could be trying to sell legitimate software via cold-calling.

Life's too short, I just put the phone down straight away. Anyone who cold calls me, I just hang up on them straight away. Never engage them in conversation. If I'm in a good mood, I'll say "I'm sorry I'm not interested" as I hang up. These people are trained to try and keep you on the line and to get their message across. Just don't waste your time.
 
AndyLandy said:
Life's too short, I just put the phone down straight away. Anyone who cold calls me, I just hang up on them straight away. Never engage them in conversation. If I'm in a good mood, I'll say "I'm sorry I'm not interested" as I hang up. These people are trained to try and keep you on the line and to get their message across. Just don't waste your time.
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Yes. To put it in another way - don't feel bad for hanging up, because they are trained to waste your time :)
 
Although, keeping them on the line and wasting their time reduces the number of other people they can scam.

Next time I'm going to just say I'm putting them on hold, then playing them some nice music at full volume, such as Pantera... or try to get a message through to them by playing "The Wall".
 
Had this a few times and I mostly pass the phone to the kids for them to have a chat lol

The one time though as i was playing some WW2 games cant remember what it was but I answered the phone and started to say you phoned the wrong number we are under attack ffs can you send supplies lol
 
my mum gets this alot, she just says to them there is no bugs on Win3.11 :cool:lol
 
Here's the thread Harrison referred to, where I wound one up by having a Commodore 64.

https://www.amibay.com/showthread.php?t=25850

Now, go and do likewise, with your retro machine of choice...:thumbsup:

I get a lot of PPI calls from Indian call centres with people calling themselves Alan/Frank/Steve/<other totally legitimate name> and the last one that called me that said his name was 'Alan' was greeted with "Oh, really? My name is Mahatma Coat." then I hung up.
 
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well whoopdy doo.
small fine and no prison sentance. I bet that will put off all the others :picard.

should be hung up by one testicular appendage (or female equivalent) from the bottom of a rickety suspension/railway bridge for 3, 1 hour shifts at peak traffic periods every day for 31 days.
then repay every person they scammed in full instantly Via a goverment loan, which is charged at 25% Apr, which can only be paid off by doing hard labour for less than minimum wage. I would give them 3 1 hour breaks during their 12 hour day shift... (but they would spend that suspended from a bridge)

and when they have paid it off. 400 hours community service + 4 months in jail. and never allowed to have the internet or a phone again, and if caught with the internet near the internet or using the phone then they have to serve the whole sentance over again.

and whilst im at it.
cold callers should be charged £1 per minute to call me.

Funny enough i never get these sort of calls though, But my parents seem inundated with them.. (i wonder how come i am different?)
 
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