After Microsoft Complaints, Indian Police Arrest Tech Support Scammers At 26 Call Centers (zdnet.com) 77
An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: New Delhi police have arrested 63 suspects in the last two months working and operating 26 call centers that were engaging in tech support scams, posing as tech support staff at Microsoft, Google, Apple, and other major tech companies. The raids on Delhi-based call centers have taken place over the last two months, Microsoft said. Police first raided 10 call centers and arrested 24 people in October, and then raided 16 other call centers and made 39 more arrests this week.
Microsoft said its staff received over 7,000 victim reports associated with the 16 call centers raided this week, from over 15 countries. Users reported paying between $100 and $500 for unnecessary tech support services and products. The raids resulted in the seizure of substantial evidence including call scripts, live chats, voice call recordings and customer records from tech support fraud operations, Microsoft said. The Delhi police's crackdown on tech support call centers came after Microsoft filed legal complaints earlier this year. Microsoft has been collecting customer complaints about tech support scams since 2014, via its "Report a technical support scam" portal.
Microsoft said its staff received over 7,000 victim reports associated with the 16 call centers raided this week, from over 15 countries. Users reported paying between $100 and $500 for unnecessary tech support services and products. The raids resulted in the seizure of substantial evidence including call scripts, live chats, voice call recordings and customer records from tech support fraud operations, Microsoft said. The Delhi police's crackdown on tech support call centers came after Microsoft filed legal complaints earlier this year. Microsoft has been collecting customer complaints about tech support scams since 2014, via its "Report a technical support scam" portal.
Re: Publicly execute them all slowly (Score:4, Funny)
Are you not the country that prides itself of not wanting a large government intervening in citizens affairs, and who prefers everything to be done by private companies?
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I predict lots of infighting in your party over what to cut and what to tax.
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Meanwhile, why isn't the IRS taking action? I got 6 calls in one day from "The IRS" telling me to settle the matter or I would be arrested by "the local cops" in one day.
The New York Attorney General's office should also file a complaint.
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I would love to see that (Score:1)
read in Indian English accent: "not good, not good, not good"
Got one of these calls at work (Score:1)
It was so obviously a scam that my only response was "Do you really expect me to fall for this?" His response? "Yes." Points for honesty, I guess.
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I got one as well, was hilarious. Hint: Don't call a security research company and tell them they have a virus on their PC. At best you get asked "Only one? What happened to the rest of our samples?"
At worst you get sent through some VMs for good measure.
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Oh this is gold! Any chance to publish that audio log?
Won't make a dent ... (Score:1)
And someone will just set up shop in another call centre, or in an apartment, or whatever ... and they'll just keep doing it.
The only way to stop this shit is to fix the utterly broken caller ID system which allows spoofing .. which was more or less demanded by the companies who outsourced jobs to these exact same call centres in the first place.
See, they wanted to have the number displayed as if it came from their published number, and thereby created all that was required for these scams to work.
Let's sto
Re: Won't make a dent ... (Score:2, Informative)
Caller ID is the shitty service. Demand they provide ANI or Billing number. Then you will know the real number.
Of course, this service is only available with expensive leased lines right now, but if enough customers bitch, things can change.
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Then require the US telcos to block all calls from international sources that do not enforce it on their end. They will get their shit in order real fast then. They can do it now, but they profit from not doing it. So turn it around on them. One fail and you're blocked for an hour. 4 for a day.
While they are at it, tell Google to quit being dickbags and implement contact list whitelisting. Not in my contacts, direct to voicemail or dropped entirely at the user's discretion. Apple already does it, which tell
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What's wrong with the custom do not disturb setting which allows calls only from contact list?
https://support.google.com/and... [google.com]
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Oops nevermind, the call blocking is specific to my device :/ Carry on.
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And someone will just set up shop in another call centre, or in an apartment, or whatever ... and they'll just keep doing it.
Hellogooddayhowareyou? I am callings from Microsoftings technical support scam reportings hotline.
We are detecting that your computing is sending out reportings from our official authorized microsofting 'report a technical support scam' portaling for unnecessary tech support services and products.
Don't worry!!! We can helping you fixing this problems. First I wanting need you to click hold on the windowing key and press the 'R' key...
Welcome to a whole new generation of fonejacker...
Fuck these assholes (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Fuck these assholes (Score:5, Funny)
That's harsh. One day you are going to be old too.
I send them to Lenny (Score:4, Informative)
My Lenny bot will miss them (Score:5, Funny)
Having setup the Lenny bot on my phone switch for a way to deal with these guys, looks like it will be a while before I get to hear Lenny drive them to despair again. The last recording I got it sounded like the scammer was about to cry "Please sir, just turn on your computer...".
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Hey kids, get on the treadmill, grandma wants to read some email!
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Both of our governments could hit the potential labor pool pretty hard by having the Indian government extradite the offenders and then issue proclamations across their media that amount to a worst possible scenario under federal law.
So, you're proposing the opposite of the "wall" idea to keep foreign immigrants out because they might be criminals: you're suggesting finding foreign criminals and importing them in.
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Both of our governments could hit the potential labor pool pretty hard by having the Indian government extradite the offenders and then issue proclamations across their media that amount to a worst possible scenario under federal law.
So, you're proposing the opposite of the "wall" idea to keep foreign immigrants out because they might be criminals: you're suggesting finding foreign criminals and importing them in.
Punish them in our prisons and then send them back.
A little reverse outsourcing there ;)
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They need to put a bunch of these guys into jail for a nice long time AND make a lot of noise about it all over the Indian media. Do that enough times to show its the new normal and a bunch of the people making all those phone calls might decide the risk of going to jail isn't worth whatever reward they get for carrying out the scams.
Re:Not in India (Score:5, Informative)
That turns out not to be true. Numerous scams have been traced to Indian sources. CBC Marketplace actually traced one group of scammers right to the actual physical call centre address. The relevant Indian police politely told them to piss off even though they had actual evidence.
I suspect the actual reason action happened in this case is that Microsoft provided sufficient "consideration" which exceeded similar "consideration" from the scammers.
Given the numbers (Score:5, Insightful)
You can expect that to be good for a week or two, before they are replaced.
Oh, that's why.... (Score:3)
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Be thankful. Once, I confronted one of these assholes with his bullshit, and he got angry. Said he was going to zero my bank account (haha, too late! I already did that). All he could do was hand out my number to all his friends, and I got scam calls every day for a month, before I unplugged the landline handset.
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You'll zero my bank account? Really? For free? Oh boy, thank you! Could you also call the collection agency and tell them to stop sending those nasty letters, that would be swell.
Sure took them long enough (Score:2)
How long have these scams being going on? Ten years?
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This will just be whack-a-mole, someone will undoubtedly resume this quite soon.
Given that the same data centres in India are used for the scams as the 'legitimate' shit, there's just no way this is going to stop these kinds of scams.
If they make money, they'll be back.
Is it just me or is India like China-lite? (Score:2)
Execute them all (Score:2, Interesting)
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Should I win the lottery . . . how much does a team of, umm, educators cost? Say, ex-special forces, perhaps. To find these folks, and "discuss" why they should consider a better, less dangerous career. Yeah, discuss, that's the ticket!
Anyone know what the PowerBall and MegaMillions are up to now? One ticket counts as "entertainment."
India is the new Nigeria (Score:1)
Push back (Score:2)
If you are bored there are plenty of youtube videos that show how best to handle the phone scammers. Some are quite amusing.
for example: https://www.youtube.com/result... [youtube.com]
The egregious perfidy of the scammers is readily apparent in most of these videos. From their point of view they are just doing a regular job and get genuinely upset if anyone calls them on it.
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I have a landline since I need it to get ADSL2+ but I dont even have a phone plugged in so any attempts from scammers to call me on the landline will get nowhere. And I have never gotten such a call on my mobile either.
I do still see the ads for the scammers though (the ones with the annoying computer generated "critical alert from microsoft" audio and the popups that are impossible to click out of and such). When I see them I try my best to report them via "report deceptive site" so they can be blocked by
Find the pricks running it (Score:2)