Often!
I did a very naughty one on one of those people. I heard the Indian accent, so since I had just finished an exchange with an old pal and colleague in India I grabbed his identity and put on the best Indian accent I could manage. So said I, "This is Swami A..., I am afraid the householder of this dwelling is out at present but may I bless you and ask you to call him again at your convenience my dear son...". The phone had gone dead by the last few words. A swami is far too holy for most of them to dare to try it on. I did not have one of those calls for weeks and weeks :-D
Have you considered therapy Mark ?
Just thought I would share this with you all.
The phone rang recently & an Indian sounding gentleman informed me that my computer had an "infection".I then made a nice cup of tea.
Thanks John. Next time I'll put the phone down. Once almost bitten...!
We only use Macs. Some years ago when I was writing my doctorate using Word on my flash Sony laptop & switching to Word on a Mac resulted in quite a lot of work lost. So it was get thee hence PC's!
I do find MacKeeper very helpful in getting rid of junk & keeping all tidy on my Macs.
Yes, it is good and there are other ones like it, but MDU stays just that bit cleverer. There are pages and pages of ways to get rid of it, very few of them are actually anything more than paid for software ultimately and far too many of them are way behind the MDU programmers. Ultimately it is a game of chance but never touch suspect files or don't download anything. In 2013 some friends in London said how they caught themselves a virus streaming television through what appeared to be an announcement about a new show coming on. There is no end of possible ways of getting us. As John says, it is one of the few real challenges left for programmers.
Don't know if this helps anyone but about three months ago I was looking to download a comedy clip from Monty Python if I recall. I managed to pick up a virus which basically closed down my computer. I was advised to try Malwarebytes. I managed to download it and hey presto, the computer was like new with no data lost following a long scan. I hade a thirty day free trial but decided to keep it.
Yes, the folks wtitting this stuff are very clever. It’s probably one of the few real programming challenges left today, all the rest is just coding with unlimited hardware resources. Anybody can do it.
It was, but emailing one of her friends my daughter gave it to her too. MDU has been around since 2011 but is modified so often and uses well disguised cloned files that look like something else that is safe that it hangs on. It is one of the few I have never managed to get rid of myself.
Was it a Windows problem Brian?
I just wouldn’t entertain any of these people Roger, even talking to them is too much, there are NO, none, nada, legitimate reasons to discuss your machine with anybody over the phone. Just hang up. BTW, after a career in IT, over the last five years I have bought and continue to use three Macs and my daughter has two and my partner one, none has ever been molested and I’d never bother with any antivirus stuff. Even on the virtual Windows machines I run in case of need I only use MS antivirus. With a bit of common sense Macs are (touch wood) are solid.
Max Driver Update charge you $30 just to be able to use free software, once in your system, if it happens to be that you get, there are two files you cannot get rid of that are the two trojan horses that enable them to extort money out of people. No anti-virus software gets rid of them because they are designed in such a way that they are not identifiable as malware and because they constantly update it is difficult to get at them. My daughter was caught, we had to go to a professional service but it was cheaper than paying the scammers. I paid €20 which was probably well over the odds anyway, but worth it.
Hi,
Just to bump this thread.
just had calls from someone with a French accent claiming to be from Microsoft saying there was a 'network problem' with my Mac. I asked him to ring back later & when he did he said he was from Apple technical support. He asked me to run some sort of check from a legit website that gave error messages.
He then asked me to download remote access software that would have given him access to my computer. I said I would NOT do this without more research. After more bullsh.. he ended the call.
Apparently the scam is that after being given access they introduce malware & want to charge you loadsamoney to get rid of it.
I'd never heard of this & he knew my name & address. So just be-aware. I use Mac-Keeper software & a virus-scam & system check showed all was well.
We're on the "red" list but they still manage to call us.
Exactly Carol, a big ref's whistle. The'll have to take a rest to let their hearing return before moving on to their next target.
Call the Microsoft help line in India :-)
haha...Shirely you are a lady after my own heart! I always ask French cold callers to please speak English and the phone goes down.....I was also brought up in Golders Green and my dad found telling Jehova's Witness's we were Jewish worked a treat...they wouldnt discuss..just left.
Brilliant Jasen....hadnt thought of that one....I may try selling the next one that rings up, my house!
I haven't (yet) had the Indian computer scammers ring me, but whenever I receive a cold call from anyone else such as energy companies, or for solar panels etc, I wait until they have finished their spiel and then ask them if they are interested in having some good quality English carpets and underlay fitted. They soon end the call when they realise you are trying to sell them something on their call. Great fun!
They tried this with me last year as well. If you play along with them they will ask you to type in a bunch of command line prompts on your computer. This will return some information to your screen that makes it appear that your software Licence has expired and that you need to renew the Licence fee with them online or your hard drive will crash and you’ll loose all your info. It’s all BS of course. I think I read somewhere that they manage to get your name and phone number online somehow but they must have a list they go through because they have never called back again.