Can any of you tell, from the accent of this English, WHERE it comes from?

[FromTheRafters]

Ned Turnbull pretended :

You did a fair job of not laughing, though I could tell that you were laughing inside. I was expecting "Could you put the nice fella I was talking to before back on?"

[Mark Lloyd]

For a lot of calls I get, caller ID NAME shows as one of:

1. the phone number

1. the letter 'V' followed by the phone number

2. something meaningless, like "FYN DSO INC"

1. an unfamilier company name

2. some charity (if I donate I do it and NOT by phone, they can't TAKE it).

Those, I don't answer let the answering machine get it. Fewer than .1% leave a message. It's like they know what they're selling isn't worthwhile, and if you have a chance to think about it you won't want it.

[Frank]

Same in the US for old telephone lines. Internet phone, voip, give all such services with no extra charge or charge for long distance. Think it is the same with cell phones.

I've always refused to pay for a service that costs the telephone company nothing to give you.

[Frank]

Most fun I ever had was telling a guy that I could not understand him. When he demurred, I asked if there was a white person there I could speak to. He went berserk and I hung up.

[Adrian Tuddenham]

Here's one I dealt with a couple of years ago:

[Ned Turnbull]

Actually, the Feds did sting this very same scam, and are prosecuting the Indians as we speak, at least according to this article:

From a cultural standpoint, what's odd is that the Indian callers don't just hang up when they've been p0wned; they get malicious.

For example, in this case, they purposefully deleted files on the computer of a security researcher from malwarebytes and called him a childish derogatory term having to do with the anatomy:

Seems to me an American would simply cut his losses and hang up. Why did they bother to call the malwarebytes researcher names, and, in my case, they said they did and would have sex with every female member of my family.

Is such childishness a cultural thing with Indians? We can safely assume they were after money, which, if they didn't get in both these documented cases, they began to call us (the consumer) names.

Would that happen in the US? Culturally, I don't think so (although anything is possible).

I wonder, culturally, if Indians are backward compared to us, in that these are 4th-grade antics of a spoiled brat who doesn't get his way.

In my case, you can literally hear the caller groan in high-pitched frustration because he couldn't rile me with his description of f*cking my mother, sisters, and wife (both past, present, and future).

You can tell me what you think, culturally, about the conversation. It seemed to me that these Indians are culturally regressed to a childish level. I can't think of a single time, in 40 years of working, anyone has ever acted so childishly in the USA with me on the phone as that Indian did to me (and to the security researcher).

Are Indians, culturally, really so childish as to think it would actually, somehow, "hurt" us to "say" they f*d our women?

[Tony Hwang]

Hi. Latest call is from Pakistan for duct cleaning job, blah, blah. The instant, I hear the vpoice, Click!

[Ned Turnbull]

That's a good way of expressing it.

The "nice fella" was there in the beginning, all helpful and supportive, and then he went away for two and a half minutes, replaced by his evil (childish) twin, but then the nice fella came back on for almost ten minutes, before regressing back to his fourth-grade childhood name calling.

I spoke with the police department, who pretty much has confirmed that the files they wanted me to download are not the payload. Those files are merely legitimate remote access programs.

The illegitimacy comes later, with what they do with the remote access they have gleaned.

However, back to the cultural divide, you can hear in the recording that I asked him what caste he was from (he ignored the question).

But, what I don't understand, is why he wasted his time stating that he f'd all the female members of my family.

Is that something that would rile up an Indian?

Here, in the USA, it's sophomoric to the point of being meaningless.

I do realize profanity was invented by humans to indicate a conflict emotional escalation prior to the physical escalation ...

But, what I don't get is, if he was really after money, what is it about his culture that made him even bother to threaten all the females in my family with his sexual attention?

[Ned Turnbull]

Hey, they found the same "problem" with your computer as with mine!

Then they had you go to wwww (dot) oooooo (dot) us but I wasn't sure *what* they were expecting at the Start->Run command (maybe that part was cropped out?).

The last line is hilarious ... "What do you think I am a fool?", and "I'm as big a liar as you are"; but, I wasn't sure what their payload was supposed to be.

[the Omrud]

The auto-diallers which these scammers use can recognise an answering machine and so do not put the call through to a human but just drop it.

[Hans Aberg]

That's bad, because malicious phone calls typically have withheld Caller ID and do not leave a message on the answering machine.

What is this and why can't one have Caller ID presentation on that?

[Hans Aberg]

You mean: like SMS. Here in Sweden, there is a flood of telephone spammers, so it is hard to not have it.

[Hans Aberg]

Perhaps the business has expanded. :-)

[FromTheRafters]

They attempt to extort money and if you don't comply they have been known to call you an asshole and delete your files.

I asked one where he was located, and he said New Jersey and gave me a (I figured bogus) street address. He said error messages were being sent to the main server - so I asked him if he was in NJ why was it a Maine server. I only wasted about 15 minutes of his time but I did it without a computer. Next time, I may let him have his way with my WinXP Home - but not my mother and sister.

It's probably part of the textual Tourettes script he follows.

I am not to be knowing this.

Agreed, almost as old as 'your mother wears combat boots'.

[...]

[clare]

Here in Canada caller ID is an option an most cell phones (but most plans include it)

[Thane]

Thanks for posting this and - good job by the way.

I've posted a link to this in NANAE. (news.admin.net-abuse.email). The Indian scammers have long been a topic of amusement amongst the members.

Thane

[rbowman]

It was a slow day at TechCenter so the guy played dumb to the point of downloading Support.me to a dummy computer to see what the scammers would do.

[Mack A. Damia]

Or when you get a call......

"Just a minute please."

Hit a few buttons to make some tones. "This is the call." Then disguise your voice.

"This is Chief Inspector Columbo from Interpol. I am calling from our office in South Africa, and this call is presently being traced. You will be charged under international law with Attemped Fraud and will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. You are looking at a minimum of ten years in prison. We will see you soon."

See how quickly he hangs up.

[Geoffrey S. Mendelson]

That's just silly. Everyone knows that since Obama became president he's cut back on "boots on the ground". No one is going to come visit and arrest him. A drone, however, is on it's way now, and its controller is locating him using his internet access.

:-)

Geoff.

[Steve Hayes]

Well that gives most of the answers about how they operate and what they're after.