Bogus Microsoft call?

kerri_gt

I had a call this morning from 'Microsoft customer care centre'. Apparnetly they have been monitoring our broadband and detected some 3rd party useage on it which means there's a virus on our pc causing it to run slowly ..blah blah blah.

Firstly, our broadband isn't provided by Microsoft - first set of alarm bells ringing.

Secondly, when I questioned where they had got my number from the guy said 'Microsoft HO - when I'd registered my product with them'. Well I haven't ever registered a Microsoft product, let alone with the landline number.

Based on the accent of the guy, the call was from some place in India.

I would suggest treating a call like this with caution if you get one

The_mangler

I had very similar last week, they ask you to input a website address leading you to a remote access site. I play along with them until I pretended to burst into tears and they cut me off - after about 20 minutes

soolin

Common scams- I was plagued with at least one call a day from them for about 3 weeks before they gave up. However I had to be very very rude to get them to stop calling.

texranger

100% SCAM like all the others mentioned in these forums

forgotmyname

Keep them talking if your bored. Pretend your having issues opening any browser window or folder.

Unexpected errors 0x00000050 or 0x00000001 etc...

Access denied. Thank them for phoning you as it was driving you mad not being able to do any work
or online shopping.

Ask them if you can send them a gift payment or would that be against company policy.

Want some warning beeps, Have your speakers on fairly loud.... left click the speaker icon near the clock on the
systray and drag the slider up and down, When you release it should make a nice sound.

Pretend thats a box says a fault has occurred, Close the box and beep beep beep.....


Ask for help at every stage, Even if your not listening.

lottie_no1

We had one of these calls come through to the depot where I used to work asking for the transport manager, he wasn't available so I asked the chap what he was calling about and he said it was to do with the computer. When I pointed out that we had a dedicated IT department that deals with all the computers and stuff the guy kept going on and on about how there was a problem with his computer and they needed to sort it! I told him that if there was a problem he needed to ring the IT department for them to fix it! He then hung up pretty sharpish!

Homeagain

I had one of these calls. Continued cooking and kept going back to say 'hold on just checking my computer'. Managed to make a lovely cottage pie, carrots and green beans. Didn't cost me a penny in phone calls ... their call, their scam, not mine. DD enjoyed the dinner (I hope).

Kite2010

From some poster on the BBC Comments site for a blog post by the technology person on this matter (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15690898)

For these best results with these guys act worried, say "I'll just put the computer on", wait a bit then say "it takes ages to start", then a bit later say "Oh scandisk has started..........1%" wait "2%" see what number they hang up on.

My personal favourite is pretending to do what the person wants me to do up-to the point where my broadband connection "fails", it's trying to connect but it keeps on dropping, that problem is real man, I better take it to my local computer shop to get it fixed so that the router connects to the net.

daggy

soolin wrote: »

Common scams- I was plagued with at least one call a day from them for about 3 weeks before they gave up. However I had to be very very rude to get them to stop calling.

Had the same call a while ago.. they get you to access windows logs/event viewer

anyway, I kept them on the phone for 2 hours... even had them telling me my printer was infected too... go figure

Horseunderwater

I actually know of someone who got one of these calls and they were working for Microsoft in the UK at the time, I kid you not! So this chap tells them, that he needs to ask the boss of UK arm of microsoft about why some idiot from "microsoft" overseas is ringing them about this "problem". All went quiet at the other end and was followed by a quiet click. Now that I did find funny, but yes they are scams. Mostly trying to get remote control of your PC to take it over and access stuff.
Frances

soolin

If you look on Youtube there are some people who have managed to record these conversations including a tech guy from a computer magazine.

I think what worried me watching these things on youtube was how very nasty the caller got when they realised they had wasted an hour or two talking to someone who knew they were scamming. Some people got death threats even , these guys are seriously unpleasant which is why I didn't feel guilty about being extremely rude to them.