I Had A Scam.

Hi to you all,
Phone rings, overseas male voice, hard to hear, accent horrible, not really able to understand properly.
Mr. Smith, this is Telstra, we are warning you that you have a problem with your Computer, OK, what is wrong.
If you follow what I'm telling you, we can fix this. Your Computer will be off for approx. 1 hour. Who am I speaking to. This is Harry Williams, No. D657295. Crap.
That was actually what he told me.
Went to Google, printed in www.teamevent.com & you will see there is a box with all the errors on your PC, along with 1 Warning.
By this time I'm just about sick of this as, there always seemed to be a 5-6Sec delay between us.
Was struggling to understand him, asked for an Australian voice, another chap a little bit better but nod good enough for me.
Asked, could send me an Email, so I can follow that. Dead Line after 36mins.
Of course there was no Email forthcoming.
So be aware, as they had my Name & Ph.No. Smith is not my real name.

They have your name and phone number because the electronic phone directory is sold to them by your beloved telephone supplier.
Sometimes get one or two of these a day for a couple of weeks, then nothing for a while. There are a number of tactics you can use.
1. Just hang up. Doesn't waste your time.
2. Blow a whistle into the phone. I'm told this is painful for the listener.
3. Try to keep them going for as long as possible by pretending to be stupid, pretending to do what they say, ask them to repeat things etc. Stops them ringing someone more gullible than yourself and can be entertaining if you have nothing better to do with your time.
4. Pick your favourite blasphemous, foul-mouthed, racially offensive insults, type them into google translate, translate them into Hindi or other sub-continental language, listen to them spoken and record it. Play it back to them.

Or if you are a geek you can transfer the caller to Lenny (an automated answering robot on voip).
:dev:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWrkDOt_IfM

I have had this as well. They want to connect to your computer, during which time they will steal all personal data (passwords, bank details, etc) and place spyware to continue the process.

I asked for their telephone number to call back. Of course what they gave was rubbish.

Regards from Perth

Derek

I was getting a few scam callers a while ago but after the last call we haven't had a single one in about six months. The caller told me there had been an accident or something similar and I agreed with him as he had rung the NSW police dept and we have a few accidents. He asked me to repeat who he had rung and I told him and then said all calls to this number were traced. He then asked me what he should do!! I advised him it might be a good idea to hang up before the trace was completed. Fair dinkum, some of them are as thick as two short planks. I am guessing that our number has been removed or I hope it has because the next one will get exactly the same treatment.

I know of 2 people that got similar calls, and as they had nothing better to do, they went along with what was being asked. They kept saying, that the page hadn't come up yet or something similar, kept them going for half an hour or more then told them, "It was the most fun they'd had all day, as they don't even own a computer, let alone know how to use one", They'd been told of this type of thing by their offspring.
Kryn

I answer all phone calls with morning and if there is a delay in the response I've used my very limited school german to talk after that....
last one asked me if I understood english, to which I replied "nine"....worked, as he hung up!!

City morgue, you kill 'em we chill 'em.
Or say "Australian federal police"
I have fun with them sometimes if I can be bothered. I had one guy say "go to hell sir" at the end of the call as he spent so long with me and finally realised he was wasting time [emoji1]


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Believe it or not, blowing a whistle down a phone line can be construed as a form of assault according to a recent article. Pity; I bought a whistle just for annoying phone calls.

I love screwing with these guys. I worked IT support for years but I usually act all concerned and waste their time until they lose the will to live and hang up.

One of the security guys I worked with a few years ago actually got really annoyed getting these calls constantly so he setup a virtual machine they could "hack", tunnelled back into their network and wreaked some of his own havoc. Not legal by a long stretch but they were in India so he wasn't that concerned. Unsurprisingly it was the last call he had from them for a while.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by crowie

I've used my very limited school german to talk after that....

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I switch over and only talk in dutch, an advantage of being an immigrant. :U

Peter.

I often ask them what the IP address of my problem system is just to make sure they are looking at the right computer. Usually they just hang up there and then, but one was smartarse enough to ask me to go to the control panel network details panel and read it back to him!

Hi All,
It seems I'm not the only one.
Thank You All for Your Responses.
I so glad I didn't do anything stupid, & let them in.
It was mainly the Accent & the delay between me asking him to speak up, & then this other chap came on, & not much better.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Cal

City morgue, you kill 'em we chill 'em.
Or say "Australian federal police"
I have fun with them sometimes if I can be bothered. I had one guy say "go to hell sir" at the end of the call as he spent so long with me and finally realised he was wasting time [emoji1]

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One that I use is "City Crematorium, You kill'em, We Grill'em" :D Only trouble was that a police officer was on the other end of the line, as the call was listed as "Restricted Number" and a mate of mine used to ring with that code, I thought it was him. The Officer was not AMUSED.
Kryn

I had a gut full of numerous callers wanting to fix my Microsoft Windows etc etc. it was happening daily at the time. On one call I acted like a 200 year old nut job. Convinced him to go right through his crap and towards the end he was wanting me to push the Windows key. It took another five minutes of him trying to tell me which key and where it was. At the end I told him I didn't have one of those and that it had an apple (that I was eating) on it. He called me a "mother you know what" and hung up. Total time 30 enjoyable minutes for me.

I later read an article where a significant number of these 'poor people' were suffering from depression due to the way Australians treated them. I have a fix for that - Don't ring Australia.

Ross