Scam

There’s a pattern in the following stills from various scammer videos, see if you can spot it. Here’s one run by Comantra I captured back in Feb [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjKjyMKj3n4&feature=player_detailpage#t=2403s]: And here’s another one [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhqxOFH2rmI&feature=player_detailpage#t=713s] from when an unknown scammer called me in late April: Now here’s one from Noah Magram [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jb69H7l0vJA&feature=player_detailpage#t=20s] wh...

If you live in a western country and have a landline telephone with a listed phone number, chances are you’ve been “cold called” by someone on the other side of the world with an introduction that goes something like this: > “Hello, I am from the Microsoft technical support division and I am calling you because we have detected some problems with your computer. This is very important – I need you to go and turn your computer on right away…” It doesn’t matter if you have a computer, in fact i...

This ain’t my first rodeo, this ain’t the first I’ve seen this dog and pony show. I first wrote about virus call centre scammers back in October along with my recording titled Anatomy of a virus call centre scam [https://www.troyhunt.com/2011/10/anatomy-of-virus-call-centre-scam.html]. I followed up a couple of months ago with Scamming the scammers – catching the virus call-centre scammers red-handed [https://www.troyhunt.com/2012/02/scamming-scammers-catching-virus-call.html] which screen recor...

A few months back I got a call one evening which was clearly a virus call centre scam; you know, the ones that call you out of the blue, tell you your PC is infected with all sorts of nasties and offer to fix it for you? Or maybe you don’t know, which of course is why these scams have been going on for quite some time and are still very active today. Fortunately I did know about such things so rather than summarily dismissing them with a level of disdain I normally reserve only for telemarketer...

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: 1. Open the event viewer then establish there are errors and warnings (there as v...