I just had a call from a very nice women who appeared to be from the subcontinent and wanted to help me remove viruses from my computer. Normally I’d dispense of such callers in a pretty quick, ruthless fashion but given the nature of this one I thought it was worth recording and sharing. It all unravels and the gig is finally up at the 23 minute mark. Enjoy!
TL;DR: Here are the steps they wanted followed:
- Open the event viewer then establish there are errors and warnings (there as viruses).
- Open the Windows prefetch folder and establish there are files in there (these are infected with the aforementioned viruses).
- Claim my Windows license needed to be renewed and that it would cost $315 Aussie.
- Open www.support.me and run their remote desktop software with the code 226841.
Clearly this is where I stopped. LogMeIn (the provider of the remote desktop service), is a perfectly legitimate organisation and I’ve contacted them to report the incident and the code used.
This is obviously a pretty organised scam. They put me through to three different people and you can hear a lot of call centre activity in the background. Given the generally well organised nature of the scam I’m surprised I kept them going for nearly half an hour (there were a few minutes before I started recording), but I guess it’s all part of establishing the FUD. Nasty stuff.
Update: A lot of people were wondering what the scammers would have done had they gained access to the machine - so I called them back. Watch the whole thing in my post about Scamming the scammers – catching the virus call centre scammers red-handed.