My First Microsoft Tech Support Scam Call - In German!

[German_EE]

It seems that the scammers are starting to branch out, this afternoon I received a telephone call from 'Microsoft Technical Support' telling me that there was a problem with my PC, the gentleman on the other end was called Hans and he spoke German but with a heavy Indian accent. Well, the best way to deal with these people is to humor them so I went to the website he asked, downloaded the executable, and ran it under Wine on Linux Mint.

To his credit he tried for ten minutes to get to the Control Panel but of course the access permissions on Wine are quite strict and he got nowhere. I kept on hearing "I do not understand, I do not understand" until there was a soft click in the earpiece and he was gone.

Just in case he left anything nasty the hard drive was then cleaned and I restored a new Linux image from backups. Logs show that my /Home directory was never touched. I know that this is a bit of a non-story but at least we now know there is another way to waste their time, hopefully they will eventually give up.

[cncjerry]

they call me twice a month.  I love asking them, " Does your mother know you are sitting in a room someplace trying to scam people for money?"  "Does your grandmother know?"  "When you sit around at family meals, are you proud of what you do?"  One guy got really pissed at me because I wouldn't hang up.  They must have some type of call forwarding device that prevents them from taking another call if I am still holding the line.  I figure the longer we keep them engaged the fewer calls they can make.

I love leading them along.

[IanMacdonald]

Cover handset with hand, and say in muffled voice, "OK Joe, this is the one. Activate the trace."   

[Electro Detective]

It's the worst day of their lives when they call me twice a year 

[Cubdriver]

German with an Indian accent.  THAT sounds like an interesting combination...   

Nice that you were able to pull one over on him, and while he was wasting his time on you he wasn't scamming anyone else.   

-Pat

[Zero999]

they call me twice a month.  I love asking them, " Does your mother know you are sitting in a room someplace trying to scam people for money?"  "Does your grandmother know?"  "When you sit around at family meals, are you proud of what you do?"  One guy got really pissed at me because I wouldn't hang up.  They must have some type of call forwarding device that prevents them from taking another call if I am still holding the line.  I figure the longer we keep them engaged the fewer calls they can make.

I love leading them along.

One of those idiots called me a couple of years ago. I had an old laptop I didn't care about and hadn't been used for anything private, so decided to use that. I followed their instructions to download and run the executable, which appeared to be some legitimate remote access software. They then asked me for the access code, which of course I refused to give the correct one. I kept giving them random numbers. They then decided to try another piece of remote access software, so I did the same. Eventually, when they realised I wasn't giving them the correct code, I told them to fuck off and stop trying to people. They then got cross when I wouldn't hand up and pretended I was being charged for the call, which I told them was impossible, because they rang me and didn't reverse the charges. I kept them on the phone for a good half hour, being verbally abusive to them.

[cdev]

Even a virtual machine sandboxed OS can be exploited, actually.  Or so I have read.

 

[Cerebus]

It seems that the scammers are starting to branch out, this afternoon I received a telephone call from 'Microsoft Technical Support' telling me that there was a problem with my PC, the gentleman on the other end was called Hans and he spoke German but with a heavy Indian accent. Well, the best way to deal with these people is to humor them so I went to the website he asked, downloaded the executable, and ran it under Wine on Linux Mint.

To his credit he tried for ten minutes to get to the Control Panel but of course the access permissions on Wine are quite strict and he got nowhere. I kept on hearing "I do not understand, I do not understand" until there was a soft click in the earpiece and he was gone.

Just in case he left anything nasty the hard drive was then cleaned and I restored a new Linux image from backups. Logs show that my /Home directory was never touched. I know that this is a bit of a non-story but at least we now know there is another way to waste their time, hopefully they will eventually give up.

This may be my fault. I used to get a *lot* of these calls and quickly learned to recognise them from the weird phony CLI sent through. One day, I don't know why, I just decided to answer and reply in German. This seemed to freak them out and deeply frustrate them, so I carried on doing it. Eventually the calls just stopped. Perhaps I did it often enough that someone decided there was a sub-market for scam calls in German. 

The truth is that I speak very little German, just enough to be polite, get fed and watered, and get around town without getting arrested. I picked up almost all my German from just listening to colleagues during visits to a previous employer's Frankfurt office. Consequently, although I speak and understand little, because I learned it from 'monkey see, monkey do' copying I have a very convincing accent - the guys in Frankfurt said that my German had no trace of an English accent in it. It is certainly good enough to fool someone from India.

[daybyter]

A video just comes to my mind...



 

[Halcyon]

Scam calls in Australia are fairly easy to detect. We have what is called a "Do not call register" which is a Government registry of telephone numbers. All legitimate telemarketing companies must (by law) "wash" their contact lists through the register. If you register with the DNCR, your number is removed from a telemarketers list and it essentially makes it unlawful for them to call or SMS you. It also applies where an Australian company has outsourced their telemarketing operations overseas, they can still be prosecuted for breaching the act even if the call originated from outside Australia.

Of course the non-legitimate scam callers don't have their contact lists checked against the DNCR, so I know that any unsolicited call I get is highly likely to be bogus.

It still doesn't stop some people from just handing over private information though. 

[Cyberdragon]

We have a DNCR in the US too, but it rarely works. It may reduce calls, but it never stops them, illegal or not. But generally we use the caller ID or number to identify legitimate calls.