OT Nearly got scammed ...

[Jimmy Stewart]

Wife got phone call this moning fom Virgin media and the indian caller in a busy call centre told her her computer was runing slow and she could speed things up...wife didn't have her laptop on and couldn't find her glasses so she hollered out the window to me in the font garden to come in and speak to the wummin'....so I came in and spoke to her....she asked me if I had my computer on and what was the key to the right of CTRL....I told her FN and she said to push the windows key to the right of that......at that point I twigged it was a scam and hung up....she phoned back imediately and I hung up again....I assumed it was a scam but the scarry thing was The wife would have fell for it....what info were they after after they took over the computer ?

[Jethro_uk]

Who knows ? But they probably make a cent or two for every infected computer they can deliver to the bot networks.

Crypto mining was in vogue a while back.

[Jimmy Stewart]

is pushing the windows key one of the steps to give them control of your computer ? ...

[GB]

Thanks goodness you didn't push it. If you had pressed the windows key and R at the same time, they could have taken over your soul. Mind you, most changes would be an improvement.

[jon]

oh, that is so unfair the way you treat jimbo

[Jimmy Stewart ...]

come to think of it she did say push both....

[Jimmy Stewart ...]

[Jimmy Stewart ...]

indeed...I am a bad man ....

[Jimmy Stewart ...]

totly

[charles]

I had one of these calls a few months ago. When I said the key had a cogwheel on it, there was a long pause. Then "Is it a Windows computer?", to which I replied "No" and they hung up.

[T i m]

<snip>

;-)

I really don't understand how / why most 'fully marbled' people could / would fall for any such things, unless they lived under a rock?

Unfortunately the BIL has lived under a (technical) rock and not long after going online, fell for a scam and was tricked into moving a large chunk of his savings into a 'safe account' (theirs of course). Luckily he got it all back but ...

People read the papers, watch the news, follow social media where warnings about this sort of scam are abundant but some still seem to fall for it?

A telephone call from 'Windows Support' or 'BT Openreach' (from a noisy call centre in India) telling me my BT broadband will be disconnected (when I'm on cable) or that my Windows PC is compromised (when I'm on Linux in that instance) is normally all it takes to start the bells ringing (and not the tinnitus this time) and then I can decide how far I want to play them and waste their time.

I did suggest to one that they 'sounded reasonably technical, why don't you get a genuine job in IT support?' and their reply was that there were none available.

Cheers, T i m

[Paul]

This is the "8000 errors scam". AKA "Tech Support scam".

"To access Event Viewer select the keyboard shortcut Win+R, type eventvwr.msc and press the ENTER key."

The idea is, the victim sees the ton of error messages and other useless tripe in the Event Viewer (which is harmless stuff) and then the caller "asks for £200 to fix it".

Then they remote in and mess around.

All they want, is your £200. There never seems to be any attempt to do more than that. You give them your credit card number, and some tech support firm appears on your next credit card billing statement, with a charge for £200.

One of the larger scam outfits, got raided by the police and shut down. But there is always another punter to start a new one.

And don't taunt them. You might think it's clever to swear at them or be rude, but you'll be sorry if you do. They won't leave you alone if you do that. They can be quite vile on the phone.

If they did get into the computer, then you should clean C: (restore from a backup). Now, for £200 , I can remote in and do that for you. I'm at 1-800-Ruin4PC.

Paul

[Jimmy Stewart ...]

fear of prosecution...tee hee

[Jimmy Stewart ...]

sound like fun....

oh well even the wife would not have been stupid enough to pay them .....

[T i m]

<snip>

Oh, that must be very rewarding for you.

And did you know they aren't typically 'black' in India? (Not that you would care just how accurate your racism was obviously).

Cheers, T i m

[Jimmy Stewart ...]

certainly is .....

she was an Indian black bastard

[Ian Jackson]

Does anyone want an iPad (or several)? Almost every day I get an automated call from Amazon telling me that my account has been debited x99 pounds ('x' varies) as payment for an iPad - and if it wasn't me who placed the order to press '1' to arrange for it to be cancelled.

As I could do with a new iPad, each time I choose NOT to press 1, and I simply wait for the message to end before ringing off. I therefore have every expectation that I will soon be receiving whole a load of iPads. [I note that, so far, no payments have been deducted from my bank account, and I suspect that the iPad shipments might be being held up because of our present Brexit problems.] However, if they DO eventually arrive, I will only really need one - so would anyone like to make me a sensible offer for the others (either individually, or as a job lot)?

[Ian Jackson]

He has no soul to take over.

[jon]

You cannot know she was born out of wedlock.

[The Natural Philosopher]

I did that some time ago..got them all excited wasted half an hour of their time before they twigged i was running Linux.

Unfortunately it also wasted half an hour of my time too.