V
Virus Guy
Well actually it was my SO that answered the phone, and as I heard the
conversation from my side it sounded way more than just the average
telemarketer phone call.
Who-ever this person was, they seemed to want to impress on recipient
that their computer was infected with something.
I told my SO to tell them that we have a MAC computer - an Apple (not
Microsoft / Windows). This seemed to throw the caller a little bit, but
they pressed on with their script.
The caller, with a very noticable east Indian accent, identified
themselves as calling from "Microsoft technical department global
services" and repeated several times that we "have a virus / severe
dammage to your computer / in two days".
My SO remembers getting a similar call like this a couple months ago.
Call display says the call originated from (202) 239-6000 (which I know
is rarely accurate and can be easily forged).
A little bit of googling came up with this:
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...one-call-from-someone-claiming-i-have-a-virus
/4489f388-d6de-416d-9158-0079764bb001
(it's a long URL - reassemble if necessary)
It looks like this is some sort of scam to enable remote assistance or
desktop sharing or something like that (as a windows 98 user, you'll
have to excuse the fact that I'm not up-to-date as to all the ways that
a win-2k/XP/vista/7 computer can be taken over by in-built tools,
services, mechanisms and programs).
This is pretty brutal that hackers are resorting to picking random phone
numbers and using telephone contact to gain access to their computer.
It must mean that electronic methods (malicious e-mail, web-hijacking,
etc) are failing more and more often these days.
If they call again, I'll be sure to take the call and see exactly where
this goes / how it's done.
conversation from my side it sounded way more than just the average
telemarketer phone call.
Who-ever this person was, they seemed to want to impress on recipient
that their computer was infected with something.
I told my SO to tell them that we have a MAC computer - an Apple (not
Microsoft / Windows). This seemed to throw the caller a little bit, but
they pressed on with their script.
The caller, with a very noticable east Indian accent, identified
themselves as calling from "Microsoft technical department global
services" and repeated several times that we "have a virus / severe
dammage to your computer / in two days".
My SO remembers getting a similar call like this a couple months ago.
Call display says the call originated from (202) 239-6000 (which I know
is rarely accurate and can be easily forged).
A little bit of googling came up with this:
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...one-call-from-someone-claiming-i-have-a-virus
/4489f388-d6de-416d-9158-0079764bb001
(it's a long URL - reassemble if necessary)
It looks like this is some sort of scam to enable remote assistance or
desktop sharing or something like that (as a windows 98 user, you'll
have to excuse the fact that I'm not up-to-date as to all the ways that
a win-2k/XP/vista/7 computer can be taken over by in-built tools,
services, mechanisms and programs).
This is pretty brutal that hackers are resorting to picking random phone
numbers and using telephone contact to gain access to their computer.
It must mean that electronic methods (malicious e-mail, web-hijacking,
etc) are failing more and more often these days.
If they call again, I'll be sure to take the call and see exactly where
this goes / how it's done.
