Tech Support Phone Scams Surge

[JMH]

The bogus tech support boiler rooms must be working overtime lately. I’ve recently been inundated with horror stories from readers who reported being harassed by unsolicited phone calls from people with Indian accents posing as Microsoft employees and pushing dodgy PC security services.

These telemarketing scams are nothing new, of course, but they seem to come and go in waves, and right now it’s definitely high tide. One reader’s story in particular really creeped me out. “Ron” wrote in to say his friend’s young daughter was the latest target.

“A friend called me to tell me that someone called his house, and using some ruse, convinced his 11 year-old daughter to ‘type in some numbers’ into the Run window,” Ron wrote. “When he got home, he turned the computer off, and we assume that it’s compromised and will need to be reformatted.”

http://krebsonsecurity.com/2012/08/...ign=Feed:+KrebsOnSecurity+(Krebs+on+Security)

 

[Shintaro]

I was called by them once, just as I was walking out the door. I realised who they were and decided to play dumb in order to try and get them to call back. I setup a VM (Win 7 no SP) for these individuals because I wanted to know what they did. And I wanted to know if I could get to their system. But they never called back. So I'm just waiting for another call.
Anybody know what they do to systems?

 

[Derrick]

I got 3 calls like that, too. They all claimed to be with Microsoft. Hmm... These scammers must not have been updated with the latest reports. The scam is all over the news and I don't think they'd still be able to get anything from this scam. They can still call people, that's a given. But fool anybody?? I don't think so.

 

[Derrick]

Well, just in case they haven't heard the news yet, Microsoft has released a statement confirming that the company NEVER calls anybody about his or her computer, much more claim that there's a virus in it. It's a big lie.

In addition to that, every new phone number they used is being reported to http://www.callercenter.com. With bout 40, 000 visitors on the site daily, the warning gets to a lot more people in just a few seconds. So even before they try to call another victim, they're already exposed.