The local newspaper ran an article about the recent spate of scam telephone calls who tell you your computer is infected with a virus and offer to "help" you get it disinfected.
Internet scam reports increase
Since reading this article, I have taken three calls from these folks, two on Saturday, 16 April 2011 and one today (Fri, 22 April 2011). Each time it is a man with an Indian accent -- "Ronnie", "Shane", and "Jack". Each asked if I have a computer with an internet connection and told me it is downloading viruses and infecting my hard drive. Ronnie and Shane said they were from the "Technical Department of Computer" in Newark, New Jersey. Jack said he was from "Tech 4 PC Support" and gave me a phone number of 631-456-4455, which appears to be an unlisted number in Suffolk County, New York on Long Island.
All three calls had the Caller ID information blocked. The first two hung up after I asked them for their phone number. After each call, I hung up and phoned *57 to capture the caller information at Comcast for potential use by law enforcement.
After the first call, I phoned the county sheriff and filed a report and also filed a report with the Internet Crime Complaint Center, as recommended in the newspaper article.
I kept the third caller on the line a bit longer to find out more about the scam. He had me use Windows-R to pull up the Microsoft "Run" dialog and then "eventvwr" to open the Microsoft Event Viewer. Then he had me go to the "Windows Logs", "Application" pane and look at all of the "Error" and "Warning" lines.
These are all pretty normal entries in an uninfected Windows system, but the scammers hope that the user has never had occasion to use Event Viewer before and is awed that the scammer would know about these errors on their computer.
The third caller asked me to open Internet Explorer and go to "www.teche4pc.com", which I declined to do.
On the next call, I may try putting the phone on speaker and recording it, as these folks have done.
Fake tech support call scam
Lysander Spooner, Neo-Confederate
1 hour ago
5 comments:
i have just had a phone call from what i believe to be the phone scammers you discribed, they told me to do exactly what they told you (eventvwr.exe)then they passed me on to their so called technitionso they could help me remove the virus. I explained that i had norton installed on my pc and they said no anti-virus can pick this up as it happens over time, alarm bells were ringing from the start now they were giving me a headache, lol so i ask them if they would phone me back in an hour after i had contacted microsoft to check.
Do you think they will.... I WON'T HOLD MY BREATH. lol
I am in Kent England and just had the same call. I refused to enter any instructions that I had received on the 'phone and rang off. I tried to recall the phone number, but it was not given.
Thanks for this blog, just had one of these calls,2/2/2012, from Gungerdin aka Brad. Told me to go to "run" put in eventvwr, said it's tea time got to go, so looked up on Google and found this blog, thanks for info, will tell him put Foxtrot Oscar in his English dictionary when/if he phones back Cheers Jon, Robin Hood Country, England.
I just kept one of them on the phone for 15 minutes, pretnding to be incompetent and fussing about. When he asked me what I could see when I went to google www.support.me....I told him I could see www.faud.uk.... He didn't understand at first so I spelt it out... He said Oh My God and laughed... I then told him what I thought of him and hung up I was the one laughing... Great game.
I am in Calgary (Alberta, Canada) and got this same call today (Feb. 20, 2012). Microsoft would never call in this manner. The red flag went up when they wanted to take control of my computer.
I called the local police and they were already aware, added my input (the name and phone number I was given to verify the accented person who called). Apparently, some people have gone as far as giving out their credit card no's to these people. I hope these people get caught!
It would be nice to know how to contact MS regarding these scams.
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