OT Nearly got scammed ...

Ours is fine. Virgin does slow down when they are monitoring your connection for the police.

nice one brian...tee hee

You must remember I hate computers and have no interest in them in any way .....

Again they will structure it so that they don't ask you for anything like that. Normally they just want you to login to your online banking on your own computer.

(the wrinkle being they have got you to give them remote access first, and then claim they can't see what you are doing)

You obviously could - but you would need to be aware enough to know to use a different line etc.

Bank details on their own are less useful - they can't make transactions apart from say setting up a direct debit.

The sad reality is that they make enough money to make it worthwhile doing (and take advantage of very lax enforcement in their country)

The man is ignorant.

Anything they could find failing that put a bomb in so some weeks on you cannot access your machines data and are asked to send them bit coins to unlock it. Brian

Yeah, like I said then.

Of course. Ok, I get if you are 'non tech savvy' or not have many 'street smarts' you could be suckered in but ...

True, but it could give them the start for a way in.

Yup. ;-(

BIL was probably about 60 when he was suckered into transferring a good few thousand into their 'safe' bank account but he was yer classic 'Technophobe'. Whilst he had some points (at work they had a typing pool and was one of the few account managers to still make use of them, inc dictating emails etc [1]), this meant he was further behind than most and so a softer target.

As you say, with the shear numbers they hit each day, they only have to find a couple like my BIL (and get away with it) to make a living.

Cheers, T i m

There are people around who aren't very intelligent. In fact some really stupid people seem to survive to a ripe old age.

Bill

Yeah, that can work both ways though...

I had a software development contract in the mid to late 90's at GEC/Marconi's air radio group. They had a traditional tech pubs department armed with Data Recall Diamond 7 word processors and nice daisy wheel printers. To get any document published, you gave a copy to them, and they typed it up and issued it - keeping a formal record copy in their filing cabinets, and possibly a copy on floppy disk. This process was created in an age where most documentation would be produced by the engineers by hand.

Alas they really had no clue about software - their idea of configuration control was to do it the same was as they did paper documents, they would keep a master copy of the ROMs for the various bits of kit in a cupboard, and could arrange for copies to be sent to production when required. That meant if you wanted the source code to be able to rebuild or alter something in the future, the best you would likely get form tech pubs would be a blank stare. It was pot luck if you could find the original engineer, and hope their development system still existed, and they still had a readable floppy with code on it!

So when we started (big project - Merlin Helicopter comms sub system) a big influx of software people, this was also the first time that all the engineers had PCs and their own word processors. This created a certain amount of tension within the tech pubs traditionalists. The original plan was we could word process our own documents and give them to tech pubs. They would print them out, then get the typing pool to rekey into their systems and issue the draft doc. Engineering could review and correct it, and send it back and fourth until it was "correct" and then passed by QA, and could be issued.

Needless to say the whole process very quickly fell about in a heap when presented with long technical docs - and the typists did not appreciate that exact layout and choice of character really did matter on software stuff. No amount of sending stuff back with comments could get something even close to what you needed.

After much argument, they agreed that we could do the body of the document ourselves, but they would produce the three front pages to the corporate standard and affix them!

Needless to say we could do a much more faithful implementation of their corporate document standard with Wordperfect and feeding PostScript to a HP LaserJet IV, than they could on their dedicated word processors!

No. If you car is travelling slow as evinced by e.g. a GPS signal phoning home, it might be the car or it might be the traffic. You can't tell. But if all the other cars are travelling faster, its a good hint the reason is in YOUR car

The man doesn't care what you think brian ...

It opens up the Run window and allows you to run commands. Usually to a system error reporter that is supposed to show thousands of errors in error logs. It is normal to have hundreds of 'errors' in the logs, they are not dangerous errors, they will not cause any problems whatsoever. This is just a prelude into you giving them remote access to your machine.

The scammers fall into 3 main camps:-

I have baited a few to see what they do using a windows virtual machine running inside linux. Mostly they just fiddle and try to charge. If I refuse to pay they delete files. No biggie, the virtual machine is disposable anyway. Some install a payload. Many open up remote access to let others in. If I leave a text file on the desktop named "Passwords" it is amazing how many people copy it. I have only had one cryptolocker, just delete the VM and copy a new one.

Type 2 is really bad as kiddy content is traced back to your house, you get raided and all your kit, every cd, dvd, computer, storage item etc publicly removed into police vehicles. You may get away with it but to the locals who witnessed the circus you will not be innocent you will have "gotten off with it".

Andy

WOW thanks for that explanation of what can happen......nasty things

No comment! :-)

I know the proprietor of my ISP personally. I know he can interrogate my router (which he provided). He also know my phone number, so he can ring me.

I actually laughed out loud, and said "How stupid do you think I am?"

There was a pause. "What do you mean?"

I said "Well, you've got a pretty good idea who I am, as you 'phoned me. But I have no idea whatsoever who you are."

The man from Lloyds (and it really was Lloyds) thought for a bit then said "You're right you know, but nobody else has ever said that".

I gave him one bit of information only. The local branch where it was convenient for me to collect a message. Which was of course not important.

Andy

Even to putting a period at the end of an email address if it happens at the end of a sentence. ;-(

Or a mate, keen to get on with the first 'Teach yourself MSDOS' magazine where it told readers to insert the floppy disk, and type

a:run me

The file was of course run_me(.bat) so the 'lesson' fell at the first hurdle. ;-(

Bless. ;-)

Quite.

I think it's a shame and probably held back many less progressive British companies in the world market (who may have only survived as long as they had because if their size and how tightly they were imbedded with MOD contracts)?

Cheers, T i m

Quite right.

Doh! I've done similar and have actually traded details a bit at a time (being very aware / conscious not to give them anything they might not have come across from a database etc).

Don't some places have an agreed password they give you, after you have given them sufficient to prove that you are who they wanted you to be?

Cheers, T i m

Yup, the first doc I did that broke tech pubs was a CORAL 66 coding standard. Just trying to get them to set out code examples in a non proportional font, and to understand that the indentation of our "paragraphs" really did need to be *exactly* as it was shown, even though it was not "proper typographic layout", and no, all those semi-colons were not a mistake!

Although they did whinge that we had used the wrong sized font on our docs, until we got out a ruler and demonstrated that ours was actually the 12pt they specified, and theirs was only 11 because their printer was scaling incorrectly!

Well in this particular case, but they had several things in their favour. Firstly their hardware (i.e. the radio kit) was very good kit that was widely deployed and trusted. Secondly the competition in many cases made the less progressive British lot look positively advanced[1], and lastly they did (kind of) have a working example of the complete system that the customer wanted to buy.

So there implementation: On power up, listen to the bus until you hear a command word, assume that is for you and adopt the destination address on it, and assume that is yours from now on. Wait for command word 1 and do nothing. Wait for command word 2 and reply with status words 1 and 2 in sequence.

So the result was, after powered up it would grab the address for some other peripheral, misinterpret the contents of a message not intended for it, and then trample over the actual target devices responses, while ignoring any we wanted it to receive!

We did highlight that this did not match the spec, and that they had a fixed price contract to deliver to that spec. Could they please fix the software ASAP? Apparently, no can do. It's the middle of summer and the whole factory shuts down for a 6 weeks. Then after that they traditionally go on strike for another month or so while the weather is still good!

(in the end we had to "accommodate" it at the controller end - by making sure that the first message sent on that bus was a HF radio one, so it got the right address, and use a different protocol from all the other devices!)