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The caller said “I’m calling you from Windows tech support.”
Here’s what happened.
Today, we received one of these calls and decided to play along just for fun.
Here’s our story.
“Our servers have detected viruses on your PC.
Are you aware of this?”.
“No, I didn’t know about that.
What does that mean?”
“Can you write down this number?”
he asked, before rattling off an alpha-numeric code for me to jot down.
Can I read that back to him?
I did, 888DCA60, and he confirmed it.
“Can you read the longest line near the end like?”
“See, that is the same code we asked you to write down.
That confirms that we are calling you from Windows and you have a virus on your rig”.
Ahh… this is going to be fun.
“Can you throw in the following into the window now?”
What do you see in the upper left corner of the screen?
What do you see in the upper right corner?
You’re Going to Take Control of My PC with Weird Russian Software?
Yes, connect to my virtual machine, you scammer!
In case you were wondering, the IP address mapped back to a server in the US.
He explains that he needs to check Event Viewer, and then sounds troubled about what he’s finding.
The third guy has a different accent, more eastern.
Or was it something else?
Sure enough, it was more than just the accent: this guy wasn’t on the same script.
That’s also when it started getting fun.
He did so by opening a command prompt and running a tree /f command.
Have you ever done this?
This is where he got really tricky.
And now you see his fake glitch notice.
You have to admit, it’s a little awesome.
“Ohhhh”, he says, “That’s not good.
Security breach and trojans are found.
Do you know what a trojan is?”.
Is my computer ever slow?
Do I ever get error messages on web sites?
$175 to Clean My PC?
you could either take it to a local repair shop or we can help clean it for you."
I respond with “OK, but how much is that going to cost me?”
I’m a little skeptical.
What he doesn’t know is that I’m laughing and trying not to let him hear.
He starts asking me when I got the computer, when the last time I updated it was.
He starts asking why on earth I am accusing him of trying to scam anybody.
He’s just trying to help me clear off the viruses and trojans on my computer.
He knew the entire time that I was a computer person.
I start to ask him where he is really located, he says Sacramento.
I ask if he’s really from Microsoft like he claimed he is.
That’s when he points out that he never said anything of the sort.
He never asked me for my credit card card or tried to screw me out of money.
He isn’t doing anything wrong.
If it was a scam why would he have suggested that I take it to a repair shop?
(He repeats this at least 10 times.
This can’t be a coincidence).
You see, the first guy calls and claims he is from “Windows” and you have viruses.
And that’s the tale of how I wasted 41 minutes having fun with a scammer.
