Microsoft Customers Hit With New Wave of Fake Tech Support Calls 201
rjmarvin writes "A new surge of callers posing predominately as Microsoft technicians are attempting and sometimes succeeding in scamming customers, convincing them their PCs are infected and directing them to install malware-ridden software or give the callers remote access to the computer. The fraudsters also solicit payment for the fake services rendered. This comes only a year after the FTC cracked down on fake tech support calls, charging six scam operators last October."
Another ad posing as a slashdot article (Score:5, Informative)
This looks more like an advertisement for sdt.bz than an actual Slashdot article.
Here's the real article:
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9244207/Fake_Windows_tech_support_calls_continue_to_plague_consumers [computerworld.com]
It's not hard to tell (Score:5, Informative)
I do technical support, but people have to come to me. I tell all my customers and potential customers that nobody cold-calls you, tells you they "have noticed" that your machine needs repair, and offers to do same. This is guaranteed to be a scam.
Other indications: A heavily accented voice saying: "Hello, my name is Frank and I am from The Microsoft and I am calling because we have noticed that your computer is infested with the viruses." I'm sorry, not only does nobody make that kind of call, nobody talks like that. (I have a friend who works at "The Microsoft", and he has decided he will henceforth be addressed as "The Frank"....) Like anything else these days, scam call centers are typically low paid foreign nationals with poor communication skills who are following a script. They do it this way because (a) the overhead is very low, and (b) it works, at least, often enough to be profitable.
These scams are not limited to fake tech support. I got a robocall a few weeks ago saying "This is a message from Chase bank. We regret to inform you that your Chase bank card has been frozen. To unlock your card, please press one to be connected to our security department". Obviously the helpful, heavily accented person you get when you press one will helpfully take your card number and identity, "unlock your card" and you'll have been robbed.
It's all the same type of scam. People sitting at card tables patiently calling number after number with the same, pre-written script, secure in the knowledge that there will be enough people who buy it to make their pimp happy and maybe they'll get a place to sleep that night.
Never give personal information to a cold call. Never believe anything you hear from a cold call. If you think it could be legit, conclude the call, look up the *real* number of whatever institution purports to have called you, and call them. Real institutions (even creditors) will understand when you insist on doing this. Do I really have to say, do *not* believe a cold call when they give you a number to call back.
Let's be careful out there.
Do us a favor (Score:5, Informative)
Do the whole world a favor and keep these guys on the line as long as possible. While they are "helping" you, they're not scamming the vulnerable.
I find it's entertaining to talk to them as you imagine your 79 year old grandmother would. Inept but just able to do all that they ask ... after three or four tries.
"Just a minute, I need to start my computer. This might take awhile. I need to put the phone down, don't go away. OK, I'm back. Wait, I need to find my password. Hold on."
Re:Seems call operations should be too expensive (Score:5, Informative)
For the same reason spam is profitable, because 2% or so of people fall for it.
So you've got a whole large number of cheap labor, calling from VOIP lines overseas, who may or may not get told to fuck off 100 times each day. But the two who think you sound like you're legit, well, that's probably your quota anyway.
The economics of this doesn't mean you have a bunch of North Americans hanging around in a call center getting paid decent money. You have hundreds (or thousands) of people in a foreign country who have been coached to learn enough English who just call huge numbers of people and hope for even a modest rate of people falling for it.
Do you know why some of the time you get nobody on the phone? The computers dial a vast amount of numbers, and when one connects they direct to an available operator. There isn't always someone there to answer.
And that's why you can get the same call 10 times in a week. It's purely made up on volume.
After all these years, when my phone rings, unless I know the number, recognize the voice, or can reach a threshold at which I believe that it's a legitimate call (which requires you be able to provide me with information, not the other way around) -- I more or less start out half hostile on the phone. Because some months, as many as 95% of all incoming calls are just scams. At least, before I started blocking "Unknown" and "Private Caller" -- if you won't tell me who you are, I'm not answering.
I love these guys (Score:4, Informative)
We (my wife and I) haven't gotten a call in a while, but a month ago we were getting daily calls.
We would ask them questions about exactly what part of Microsoft they work for. We would ask them what their real name was and where were they really calling from. We would echo back everything that they said to us. We would note that we only have Mac and (other) Unix systems systems in the house and then give various takes on "how could you be getting warnings from our Windows computer when we have none here". At one point, we had a contest to see how long we could keep them on the line until they got frustrated and hung up.
We haven't gotten a call in over a month.
Re:social engineering (Score:1, Informative)
This! Income/ability-to-pay-for has no correlation with "buying expensive gadgets". If anything, there is an inverse correlation - poor people are sometimes poor because they have no self control, no concept of value, etc.