Just had a wonderful telephone conversation from a man with a strong Indian/Pakistani accent telling me I have major problems with my computer! How he knows, I don’t know, lol!
He then asked me to sit at my computer and I think he was going to tell me that if I looked in a certain place, I would see all these messages and alerts that I should be concerned about!
So I had a bit of fun with him!
I asked him for his details, apparently the company is situated in Paris.
I asked him why he wasn’t speaking in French as he had dialled a French number. The poor soul said it was because he didn’t speak French - quel dommage!
MORE IMPORTANTLY - THE SCAMMERS ARE BACK!
This is a well known Scam in he UK. They are just trying to use the fear factor of people who are not that IT literate and obtain money from them.
The telephone number they called me from was 004723377629.
Yes, 47 is Norway but bet your bottom dollar they are using a proxy and he is calling from a huge great centre in Bangalore that might as well call itself 'Scams-are-Us'.
I was scammed/phished whilst I was in hospital earlier this year. James and a German friend picked up the message that went out asking for money sent to me in Spain, etc, but forget that bit. James tracked it back to Nigeria and an answering machine. My friend in Berlin is in computer security design, so kindly sent the source of the message a custom built virus as a pressie. He has told me very often that commercial anti-virus software is far too slow to protect PCs and like many professionals he does not bother. I have a corporate version of Symantec that I loaded whilst still working at a university. It will invalidate soon. However, none of that helps with scams like this. So people need to develop strategies such as using languages the callers cannot speak, preferably not even identify or saying "Bon jour, gendarmerie de Bordeaux" or whatever as soon as you get a smell of scam.
Hotlines are, it seems, a good cover too and when they work it is simply a scam colleague who will bullsh.. his/her way through your problem and refer you to a dead end. So, we are all just going to need to get cleverer I suspect. Boring!