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Thread: What kind of scam was this?

  1. #1
    High Plains Luddite George's Avatar
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    What kind of scam was this?

    You guys may ask, after reading this, "well, did he say this?" "Did he ask about that?" This is all I know. I have no other info. I assume this was a scam but my wife is upset and I suppose it's theoretically possible that it's not a scam, but I'm thinking 99.9% likely this is something to forget about.

    I'm at work right now. My wife just called me and sounded very stressed. That's typical because, as anyone with kids knows, when Mom gets on the phone, little kids decide they need attention NOW. And she was on two phones! Here's the deal:

    She called me from home, but from her cell phone. She said she had a guy on hold (phone muted) who had just called our landline. He said he was calling from India from some "Windows support group". She said he had a heavy accent and was very hard to understand. She asked him if he worked for Microsoft and he said no but was some kind of Microsoft certified something or other.

    He told her that her "Windows computer" was sending out messages of some kind and this was a problem. He wanted her to log into her computer while he wa son the phone. I'm suspecting it would have been a request for remote access, as the IT guys do in my company when I call them with a computer question. They take over from the another office. Or perhaps he wanted some other info that he would have asked her to find and give to her.

    She said the only info she gave him, without thinking, was "Which computer?" (We have two WinXP PCs at home). He then asked her how many we had and she told me that's when she then got her wits about her and told him "none of your business".

    That's when she muted the landline and called me from her cell phone to ask what to do. I told her to hang up, and she did, without ever unmuting the phone. I figured if it this was a real thing, he would call back right away and leave a message, which I could then deal with when I get home.

    Have you guys heard of this before? I'm thinking it's gotta be a scam - a guy fishing for suckers during the day and hoping to get clueless Moms home with their kids (normall our kids would be in Kindergarten but there's no school today) or the elderly.

    Thanks.

  2. #2
    mAdminstrator Random's Avatar
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    Yep, scam.

    http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2...-ars-technica/ <-- you probably shouldn't call the office of a major tech blog with it, either.
    Whoomah!

  3. #3
    High Plains Luddite George's Avatar
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    You know what, this thread probably isn't even worth any replies. It must have been a scam.

    I got to thinking that because we have DSL through the phone company, anyone who could track the IP address of "messages being sent out from a computer" could theoretically tie that to the landline phone number - especially if it was the phone company/ISP.

    I just called them and about fell out of my chair from the shock of having a real person answer the phone instead of my having to press 500 buttons in increasing frustration as some machine asked me an endless string of "If you're calling about a business account, press 1. If you calling about a residential account..." and so forth.

    She said there's no way someone from their company would call without clearly identifying who they were with and that "Windows support group" sounded like a scam to her too.

    So I'm content.

    That's it. Move along. Nothing else to see here.

  4. #4
    High Plains Luddite George's Avatar
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    Thanks Random. Missed your post while I was typing.

    Edited to add: I read the link. Thanks. That sounds exactly like what my wife described...at least the very first part before she got suspicious.
    Last edited by George; January 17th, 2014 at 09:22 AM.

  5. #5
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    A huge ring of people running this scam got busted not that long ago, but it looks like it's started up again. Two of my coworkers got the same call at home this week. Both were busy and got callback information, then asked me about it. I told them both to milk as much information out of the caller as possible on the callback, then hand it all over to the FBI. Plenty of people would fall for this scam - everyone seems to have forgotten about old school grifting and believes that cons only come over email. I suppose that's the genius in this scam. Anything folks can do to help the feds nail these fuckers is great.

  6. #6
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    My son got the exact same call on Wednesday... "tech support" for the computer. He'd just gotten home from school, so none of the computers were even on. He told them his dad takes care of the computers and call back later.

  7. #7
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    They shouldn't be able to match phone number to op address.
    Even if it's from the same telco, only the telco should have that data.

    Generally it's a random call and I presume at some point they will get you to read out your IP address or connect to them.
    Had a friend get a similar call, he pointed out they only have macs and caller hung up.

  8. #8
    Spiny beast TheBenior's Avatar
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    I've gotten a few of those calls.

    The last time went something like this:
    Scammer: "Hello, I am calling you from Windows..."
    Me, interjecting: "No you're not, this is a scam!"
    [line disconnects]

  9. #9
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    we got those at the warehouse i used to work at. didn't matter as we didn't do any IT inhouse anyways as it's all handled at corporate.

  10. #10
    Wanna Fight?
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    I had that once. Problems with my Windows installation. As soon as I told them I use a Mac, they hung up.

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