Those "problem with your computer" calls

[Peter Ceresole]

What- you mean as in "I.T"?

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Seems the favoured accent is geordie. Sounds honest. How easily are some fooled. ;-)

[chrisj.doran%proemail.co.uk]

Given the length of time this has been going on, and the likelihood that at some point they will call a police officer, it seems surprising that said officers don't have a standing instruction to get the number traced while keeping them hanging on. I realise the police in the sub-continent may not be the best in the world, but they can't all be corrupt or lazy. At the very least there could be some dummy credit card numbers issued that cause the card company to immediately terminate the scammer's account.

Chris

[Frederick Williams]

There is an operating system called MMURTL which, one might well imagine*, was named by someone with a stutter.

• if one had nothing better to do.

[Clive Page]

I'm surprised that the UK's banks and credit card companies don't simply refuse to deal with the banks that handle these payments, and thereby save themselves a whole lot of trouble in making subsequent refunds.

The computer security folk at Cambridge University reckon that there are just a handful of banks involved in a whole range of scams, many of them based in former Soviet central asia.

[Jim Chisholm]

My concern about this is that the police don't take it seriously. After I'd had two of these calls, with one of which they rang back and shouted insults after I said it was a criminal scam, I contacted the police to ask they they track down source and block calls. They never got back to me. {I've heard some stuff from overseas does get blocked.

I know all the unsolicited calls I get are scams as we've signed up to telephone preference service.

Jim

[eastender]

That's what I do ­ my tactic is to say, "Hold on there's someone at the door but I really want to talk to you. Please wait." And then I just carry on working.

My other main response when they use my first name and say 'How are you' is to say 'terrible' and tell them I've lost my job, the dog's died etc.

E.

[Gib Bogle]

When an obviously junk caller asks for me, my wife sometimes tells them that I died recently.

[Gib Bogle]

ESP?

[naffer]

Been getting these "Windows" calls off & all for some time. Initially, I played games, keeping them on the 'phone until I got bored and explained that it was all v silly 'cos I used Linux. Now I use ULTRA ABUSE. My logic is that I don't want my time wasted and if I'm really offensive enough the saddoes won't want to make these calls.

It's sad for the less fortunate guys on the 'phones but I don't think that sympathy for them would their excuse theft of my car or wallet. Why shoild it excuse this form of theft.

More interesting is how to deal with the crooks with full-blown posh English accents. They call selling land near Milton Keynes for building plots that can't be built on & ridiculous "green" schemes in Brazil. Since I have registered with the Telephone Preference Service (TPS) not to be cold called, I feel entitled to be ULTRA ABUSIVE when called.

So: try ULTRA ABUSE if you can't get satisfaction by any other method. THINK: What would you say if you saw someone stealing your car?

[Roger Mills]

If you're serious - and I'm not sure whether that remark was tongue in cheek or not - I admire your faith in the TPS!

[Dave Plowman (News)]

It did reduce my cold calls considerably for a while. Get perhaps 3 a week now.

[Gib Bogle]

Abuse is good. I generally don't bother with more than a few choice words.

[Cash]

For me, they used Prefetch. Only once, I 'let them' take me through their procdures of 'finding' that folder - and the Indian sounding person on the end of the 'phone sounded ever-so-pleased when "I found it" after a "struggle". He then asked me open the folders and to tell him how many "bad" items I had there.

He wasn't so pleased when I said "none" - and proceeded to tell me I was being untruthful - he rapidly changed his mind when I explained to him the method that I had used to disable Prefetch in the registry of Windows XP to stop people like him 'conning' my wife when I wasn't around - he was even less pleased with the sex and travel response I gave him!

And all this with me be being nowhere near my computer (which wasn't even switched on) - the fellow must have been psychic! LOL

Cash

[Roger Chapman]

I signed up so long ago I eventually forgot I had and tried to sign up again. Having said that I don't get many cold calls, perhaps less than one a week, but over the last few months they have been almost without exception someone enquiring about whether I have had loft insulation and/or cavity wall installation installed yet. The conversations are getting shorter and shorter as I get bored easily but they are all based on the premise that someone with now real knowledge of their subject and a poor command of English would find it a struggle understanding that I have neither a significant loft space nor cavity walls even if I was making it easy for them, which of course I don't.

Do these grants based calls really have any legitimate basis? Not being able to apply for any such grants I haven't kept up with the facts.

[David Kennedy]

Some of them do. I did have a nice chap who arrived to do a free survey

- even after I explained I had no cavity and no loft - who turned up with his step ladder, spent 20 minutes explaining what I could qualify for as a grant and what might be chargeable, who then left in a huff when he discovered I had no cavities, no loft and that even double glazing was a no.

[Brian Gaff]

I had to sort a computer out that had been got at by one of these people. It had a trojan placed on it that apparently was logging keystrokes. Brian

[Rowland McDonnell]

[snip]

I do find it entertaining quite how ready these people are to harangue the people they're supposed to be trying to con.

I've received quite a lot of very entertaining criticism myself - they usually start to get very snotty when I explain that I know that they're a criminal fraudster, should be ashamed of themselves, get yourself a decent honest job, etc., etc.

They don't like that sort of thing, they really don't.

Of course, if they were genuine, they'd have a script/routine which covered what to do with an arsey customer - but fraudsters try to `get their own back' against me, which of course is exactly what I want them to do: go on, waste your time trying to annoy me, in the meantime I'm ensuring that you're earning no money and not ripping anyone off. A win for me :-)

Along the lines of Private Eye's famous response in the case of Arkell vs. Pressdram 1971?

I'm curious - what's Prefetch?

(N.B. uk.comp.sys.mac is where I'm posting from)

Rowland.

[John Rumm]

A default folder inside the main Windows folder on NT class machines, where the OS caches fragments of recently used applications and libraries into the prefetch area such that it can then preload them in future. It is designed to make further accesses faster... in theory anyway!

[Rowland McDonnell]

Ah - righto. Ta.

Blimey.

But from what Cash wrote, it seems that it's common to con people via this Prefetch folder.

Can anyone explain how that works?

(I'm thinking: but it's just a cache. What's the gimmick that lets a con be operated this way?)

Rowland.