New Angle on the 'Support' Scam

datostar

Had a call yesterday (yes, Saturday afternoon!) from an Indian sounding gentleman claiming to be from 'BT Technical Services' telling me that my computer had been downloading nasty files and viruses over the last couple of days. Told him that my computer wasn't connected to any BT internet service. No matter because all the other providers use BT lines. Told him that Virgin Cable most certainly didn't and he claimed they did. I told him that if my computer was communicating with them he would certainly know my IP address and asked to tell me what it was. He rang off at that point.
Seems like a new variant on the Microsoft Support scam which a lot of people have probably got wise to but could be dangerous to some.

dggar

running the following "ipconfig/all" (without the quotation marks.) at the command prompt will list details about your network connection on your computer.


An item named Physical Address appears (about 13 lines down)


This is a unique 12 character string associated with the network card in your computer.
It is sometimes known as the MAC address.

Anyone claiming to have identified that your computer doing something would need to know this information.


Challenge any scammer to tell you the MAC address, they will probably give you some verbal abuse and ring off.

Robisere

Tell them you are an off-duty Internet Fraud Squad police officer and listen for the disconnect.