I just received a phone call

[lowell holmes]

Stating that my internet connection has been compromised and they would fix it. Oh, and they sounded a bit foreign, but to Texans, a lot sound that way.

I hung up. I am bringing a technician from the Geek squad to correct some minor issues on my computer any way.

[Thomas McCurnin]

Its a scam. Some guy from India wants you to give him full access to your computer. He claims he is from Apple or Microsoft. Once he is inside your computer, he screws stuff up, then charges you about $80 to fix it. There are actually some really funny videos of guys who keep these scammers on the phone for 40 minutes wasting their time.

[Roger Feeley]

Yep, it's a scam.
Way back in the day before the internet there was time sharing using a dial up modem. Hackers would just auto-dial numbers looking for a modem carrier. I worked at a place with lots of data communications equipment and we had a spare phone line. The customer service guys hooked up a phone, modem and a protocol analyzer to the modem. There was no computer to log into. There was just an analyzer that showed people dialing in an trying to log into a computer that wasn't there. They got a laugh out of that.

So I went them one better. I wrote a little program that delivered a prompt as if it was a local bank. That drove the hackers crazy trying to guess the user ID.
We couldn't leave it alone. We gave our program a user id that they could get and challenged for a password. to make it even more enticing, When they entered the user id, the prompt that came indicated that they were logging in as admin.

We figured we were doing the world a service by wasting the time of the hackers.

[Jim Koepke]

When the tell me there is a problem with my windows, my reply is that they were just cleaned a few days ago. Sometimes they have been strung along a little further, most of the time they are told, "we refuse to work with criminals." When they claim they are not a criminal, they are told by callilng me they are committing a crime since my number is on the do not call list and therefore they are committing a crime.

Another bit of sinister fun, usually the live people are listening on a headset. Talk real low so they turn things up. Tell them you can't hear them. Then press one of the number keys to give them a blast in the ear. You may hear some obscenities in another language.

jtk

[Tony Pisano]

Last yr, was getting 6 to 8 calls a day from "apple" on my answering machine. I finally picked up and waited for "tecnician".went through the whole process, first saying I don't know what an internet service provider is, then not knowing who mine was, then remembering, asking him to repeat things. Eventually I pretended to turn my computer on, delayed because it was "slow to boot up" As he asked me to click through various screens, I paused each time then said okay, or I don't see it, oh there it is. Eventually I was was supposed to read a number. Oh hold on, that's 397 not 379. Finally we get to the part where he asks
"What do you see on your screen?"
I see an apple.
You see an apple? In a confused voice
Yes I see an apple, I say. It's like the biggest apple I've ever seen in my whole life. It takes up the whole screen and it's really red.
He comes back with, "Do me a favor and grab that apple and take a big bite" click
It only took a couple of conversations with a technician over the next 2 days, and amazingly, my problem was fixed. No more calls.

[Rich Engelhardt]

Back in the mid 1980's - long before the personal computer went main stream (everything then was Commodore 64 or 128 ...or....Atari), I worked in a retail store that had dial up check line - you called, gave them the name and account number on the check and the service approved or denied it. If the check bounced after being approved, the service ate the cost of the check.

Anyhow - -if one of those phones ever rang, it was a wrong number - -since the numbers wer'nt listed anywhere or even used for anything else.
When a wrong number came in (on of the phones rang) I'd pick it up and answer "Fbi, agent Jones speaking" or "Secret service division of the United States treasury deartment - Presidential security division, whom should I tell the President is calling?"

:D :D It was a lot of fun!

But - yeah - it's a scam about the Internet thing.

[Al Launier]

Having experienced the same as above, from India and/or the Philippines, after repeated calls from the same person (sounded like the same person, but hard to tell when they sound alike & talk so fast) I decided to blow him off. I asked him to hold on while I booted up my computer, waited a couple minutes, then asked if he was still there, then used an air horn into the phone. That ended the call and he didn't call back.

Since then I decided to have scam calls prevented by using the option provided by Xfinity Comcast that has an updated computerized list of these numbers. So far this has worked very well. I simply have to wait for the phone to ring twice before answering. If it rings only once it's been auto-disconnected by XC. I now get only about 25% of what I used to get and these are just about all from stateside (?), at least they sound that way.