Who Falls For Phone Scams? - Comments Page 2

Category: Finance , Telephony




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Posted by:

Nancy
13 Apr 2016

Beware of scammers who claim to be from Dell and who are able to give you the correct model and even service tag for your computer. I'm not sure how it is/was possible for them to get this information, but they had it (not that it did them any good). My computers are very well protected, have no viruses, and we're a senior couple with nobody having inside access to determine this info, so I suspect it came from Dell in some manner (hacking or inside job). Dell will not call you any more than Microsoft will, but if ever in doubt, make your own call back after researching the support number on the applicable website (Don't use any number the caller gives you). Even better, use the company's online chat feature to report suspicious activity.

Posted by:

Adrian
13 Apr 2016

I have had many of those "Microsoft Helpdesk" calls. Sometimes I just abuse them and they put the phone down immediately. The one day I told the guy he was a criminal (not in such polite words) and he almost had a thrombosis, threatening to get the police to come around. The more I laughed, the more agitated he got. I enjoyed that one ! It is quite remarkable how many English swear words these people have learnt when English is not their primary language.

I was doing a little research into those particular scammers. After spending a little while showing you irrelevant error messages in your Windows logfiles, they will invariably take you to a totally legitimate site that provides remote desktop software. They will want you to install the client software and then they will give you some kind of key or ID number to type in so that they may remotely take control of your computer. It seems they pay quite a lot of money to those legitimate remote control software companies for the "licence" to use the software, so if you can perhaps pretend to install the remote control client software and then ask for the licence key or access code or whatever it may be, you can then report that code to the provider of the remote control software and let them know that a scammer is trying to use that licence. It will at least hurt those scum in their pocket. If you do install the client software, this in itself is not going to cause any harm to your PC provided it is indeed from a bona-fide site, just make sure you never give them any codes or ID numbers from your PC. If you give them a number or code from your side, change several digits or characters so that it will never work.

The more of their time you can waste, the less time they have to catch some poor sucker, so if you have the time, have some fun with them.

Posted by:

Not Gullible
15 Apr 2016

So far, we have received 4 IRS phone calls. One woke us up at 6:30am. I have reported all the calls, which they leave the messages on the answering machine.

Posted by:

Jim Swan
17 Apr 2016

Two comments:

1: There is as hilarious TED talk on this topic by James Vietch ( I hope I've spelled his name correctly)

2: Here in Japan the convenience stores, such as 7-11, are ubiquitous and have over the past decade or so really turned themselves into the go-to places for many, many services, including printouts of confidential city government documents. They really live up to their "convenience" name. Think 19th century General Store updated for the 21st century

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