Microsoft phone scam

Browntoa

spoke to a friend of a friend the other day who was having PC problems , he must be a dream for these types of scammers

he fell for this one , the Teeth Whitening scam and the "you need to download this to view this site" and has the pay $49 to fix this warning ( luckily he rang me to ask about that one)

Chick

I have just had one of these phone calls about 15 mins ago- just been googling to see what it's all about!

Seems like it's something that has been going on for ages...the man (with an Indian accent) said he was from the 'Windows service centre' and that my computer had lots of viruses & dodgy downloaded stuff that had been reported back to them. I thought it was bizarre having an unsolicited phonecall from microsoft/windows...he adressed me by my title & surname which caught me a bit at first, then I just found it all quite odd.

As I'm in the middle of revising for exams, I put him off straight away- even if I did have a virus I don't have time to sort it out!! he said he's going to call back tomorrow, I know what I have to say to him now!

Browntoa

tell him you use linux and "what was it he wanted to do with the PC ??"

Dee_Mented

I have had several of these calls and they do sound genuine, but I have not fallen for their very persuasive nonsense. I always tell them I know it is a scam and that I will NOT be allowing them access to my PC. Then I hang up.:)

alistair.long

Im bored, I could do with a call like this, I have a spare computer that I would love for them to mess about with, but I dont think they can get past my firewall

brewerdave

Must be the silly season......had a call on Monday from PC Homecare (I think!) ...after a couple of minutes of "round the houses" discussion the "lady" twigged that I was having fun with her,turned nasty,and told me that I was going to regret it, she was going to phone me every day,several times a day, and block my telephone!!!
So far-it still works :rotfl:

rob_campo

i had one of these calls - told him i had a mac so wasnt sure how microsoft could have told him anything (i dont have a mac)
The Indian guy then asked how old it was and said that all macs less than 3 years old were actually made by microsoft.

i hung up but he called back about 3 or 4 times so i answered - played along with it for a while then hung up - the guy called maybe another 10 times straight after the answerphone kicked in.

i eventually answered and left the phone on the table - when i came back about 10 mins later and picked it up to see if he had gone he was still there swearing alot about me and that he couldnt hang up and swearing some more about me - using my name etc.

when i said !!!!!! you doing he said he was going to come to london and put a bomb up my !!! because he apparantly knows where i ive (which is no where near london.lol) - i laughed and hung up - he called back a few more times - but nothing since...

spannerzone

wow what an awful person / company - not only try to scam you but then threaten to kill you for not complying!!

NonGeographicalMan

I just had the www.careyourpc.com mob ring me for the third time in the last 10 days. So not only do they have no regard whatsoever for the TPS but they are so incompetent and disorganised as criminals (perhaps one should expect criminals to be disorganised though) that they keep on ringing the same UK numbers that have already told them to let lost before. Hard to understand when they have 25,000,000 or so UK residential lines in the UK to choose from not to mention 350,000.000 or so in the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand (although the Americans are usually targetted by Philippinnes call centres and not Indian ones for legacy reasons of Empire)

When they first called 10 days ago I didn't have the time and as they had withheld their number I just moved on quite quickly to why were they ringing despite my TPS registration and didn't Indians have an honest way to earn a living. I also complained that if he was going to scam me surely he needed to speak proper UK English and really ridiculed him about how his Indian English ran all his words together and how no one could be taken in by such a poor English speaker. To be fair having had two further calls from this gang of crooks since then he was by far the most hopeless of their scammers as I can't believe even the most stupid person would part with their money or let such a basically English illiterate Indian take over their computer.

Anyhow after I had been rude to him for a while I hung up and he then immediately rang me back three times to hurl numerous oaths and obscencities at me about the Bl***y British and the F****ng British. Only when I said I would have to report him to the Police if he called again did he desist. The fact that they even stoop to this level gives them away immediately as a bunch of crims as no normal Indian call centre worker would ever do that as they would be instantly dismissed if the customer made a complaint and their call was listened to.

Today the caller spoke much more competent English and I had the time and had played along with looking in my System Information screen etc and so on and him showing me there were hundreds of configuration areas in certain places (there always are and anyhow this HP Renew machine was massively misconfigured by HP when they renewed it and I am about to reformat and reinstall it - I have only had it a couple of weeks).

At this point he put me on to his boss who called himself Sam Henderson (they must be very stupid to think it is confidence inspiring to use a non Indian name when clearly calling from India) who took me on to the go to our www.careyourpc.com site (even the website name is crap Indian English idiomatically) and then click the button on the right of the screen for Request Remote Session. I perhaps rashly went that far just to discover what the scam was at which point it asked me for a code for what looked like a remote Windows access session which he was eager to give me. I assume it would be at this point that a remote Windows access session would be granted and the virus planted on my computer if I had gone ahead. Although even visiting www.caremypc.com and more importantly clicking the Request Remote Session button was probably a risk. I think I took the risk because I'm in any case about to reformat and reinstall the operating system.

At this point I thanked him very much for giving me all the information I now needed to report them to the TPS (there is a London 020 3 number shown on their website so a UK telecoms supplier somewhere is complicit in the scam and should be able to be threatened with loss of their licence to issue UK numbers) and the Information Commissioner.

They are obviously used to people doing this as he then said quite calmly "have you got all that off your chest now" and was basically totally unapologetic about trying to earn his living by scamming stupid Brits and installing viruses on their PCs and blackmailing them to remove the said virus.

I think we parted on couldn't he possibly go and plant some crops in a field or go and make something in a factory which would be an honest and useful thing to do.

When I challenged him on the TPS registration the cheeky little so and so even asked me if I could him my TPS registration code to give him as though if I hadn't got that it wasn't valid. They really have no shame.

I would have thought it was actually much more cost effective for them to only target this scam on people who are not TPS registered by buying screened data as non TPS registered homes are usually amongst the least well educated and tech savvy members of the UK population but for some reason they don't seem to see it this way. Also as they keep on ringing up the same numbers every few days they either don't have a very efficient random number dialler (they didn't say was I a Mr X and give my address as the average TPS breaching Indian call centre trying to sell something does) or have only bought quite a small total list of numbers.

The bottom line is I will file a complaint with the TPS and the ICO listing the website about the genuine London 020 3 number involved in the scam (I called it while withholding my number and it does go through to the same mob in lovely Durgapur in West Bengal See http://www.careyourpc.com/How_we_Support.aspx )

As to the chap who spent 45 minutes and then an hour with them on the phone you need to remember that their time is worth much less than yours so I don't think its really worth spending more than 10 or 15 minutes to find out what the scam is and then be as rude as possible to them before reporting them to the TPS and ICO.

A complaint can be filed with the TPS at www.tpsonline.org.uk and the ICO at www.ico.gov.uk under the PECR regulations.

Their www.careyourpc.com domain is registered with www.godaddy.com who I believe are American so really some kind of investigation and banning of their websit in that quarter also ought to take place.

See below:-

Domain Name: CAREYOURPC.COM
Registrar: GODADDY.COM, LLC
Whois Server: whois.godaddy.com
Referral URL: http://registrar.godaddy.com
Name Server: WNS7.CLIENTSINDIA.CO.IN
Name Server: WNS8.CLIENTSINDIA.CO.IN
Status: clientDeleteProhibited
Status: clientRenewProhibited
Status: clientTransferProhibited
Status: clientUpdateProhibited
Updated Date: 31-oct-2011
Creation Date: 03-jan-2011
Expiration Date: 03-jan-2013

NonGeographicalMan

OK I just got off the phone from speaking to the customer service line for https://www.LogMeIn.com which is in the USA but on a UK Freephone number of 0808 101 7128.

The guy there took my complaint that their product was being used for crime extremely seriously and asked me if I had been a given a 6 digit PIN number by the the https://www.careyourpc.com scammers to access the logmeinpc.com portal Luckily I was not only given this code but also recorded it and it was 361589

I would therefore recommend anyone willing to play along all the way on the scam to go as far as where they get you to click on the link on their website (you don't have to click the link as the person calling will still give you a PIN number if you say you have) and to report the nature of the criminal activity and the PIN number you are given to LogMeIn.com for free on 0808 101 7128

Obviously the careyourpc.com mob will just set up a new remote access portal somewhere else but if LogMeIn.com gets enough reports they might even enlist the help of US crime agencies to investigate this further. At the very least the much more complacent godaddy.com in the US ought to be shamed in to deregistering the https://www.careyourpc.com URL although no doubt the scammers will then just set up another website with a new URL in due course.

Here are some other things you can do if you feel strongly enough or have the time:-

1. Email the CEO of Ofcom ed.richards@ofcom.org.uk suggesting they really should be taking some kind of proactive emergency action against the telecoms firm providing the London 020 3 number which does go through to the scammers

2. You can also log a complaint with your local Police force on their non emergency phone number reporting details of the attempted scam and they will give you a crime number. Report it as being attempted robbery etc.