The Unstoppable 'Tech Support' Scam

Barence writes "A pernicious new type of scam is targeting British computer owners, reports PC Pro. The con is both fiendishly clever and ridiculously simple. The fraudster cold-calls the customer and tells them that Microsoft has detected a virus on their PC, then invites them to download a piece of remote-assistance software. No doubt reassured by the lines of indecipherable code flitting across their screen, the caller assures the customer they can make the virus vanish – but first, of course, they want payment. £185 to be precise. The spoof site behind the scam is approved by McAfee's Site Advisor and bears Microsoft logos, something which both companies have failed to act upon. Meanwhile, an assortment of British regulators have said there is nothing they can do to stop it."

Comments

Scum

[lobiusmoop]

God, there are some real scumbags in the world.

Re:Scum

[Monkeedude1212]

Yeah. What morally responsible individual would ruin the good name of Microsoft?

Re:Scum

[Anonymous Coward]

God, there are some real scumbags in the world.

And a lot of fools.

Re:Scum

[causality]

God, there are some real scumbags in the world.

Yes, but they are non-violent and require the cooperation of their "victims". Thus, they are like ticks, leeches, mosquitoes, flies, and worms: they are unpleasant and downright nasty but they serve a purpose. They provide a limiting function. They disincentivize ignorance and stupidity by making it more painful, just like those natural pests disincentivize improper sanitation. By becoming knowledgable and savvy, the "victim" can have total control over whether he/she is successfully targeted.

Really now, all it would take is a small amount of healthy skepticism. Let's assume the scammer is so good that there are no other "tells". A user would only need to say to the scammer "Microsoft found a virus on my PC did they? Let me get back to you" and then call Microsoft. As unpleasant as calling Microsoft would be, it beats giving money to a scammer. It's the same well-known principle used for dealing with suspicious communications from banks. If you don't know if that e-mail is really from your bank because you don't have the technical skill to determine that, then you ignore it and call your bank at their published phone number. Then it doesn't matter if it's the most clever phishing e-mail in the world.

It doesn't exactly require a genius to understand these things. It just requires that one not leap blindly into what they do not understand while expecting a good result. That's general advice for life, not just computing. I personally believe that almost everyone is capable of understanding these simple concepts, they just can't be bothered to think. Perhaps they need a little incentive. Perhaps by providing one the scammers are serving a purpose, even though I fully agree with you that they are scumbags. That's why I'd liken them to a carrion-eater or a parasite.

Re:Scum

[Anonymous Coward]

They disincentivize ignorance and stupidity by making it more painful, just like those natural pests disincentivize improper sanitation./quote?

Yet the only reason why we care to disincentivize ignorance and stupidity is because those scammers exist. Your logic is viciously circular. They need to exist to protect people from themselves?

Re:Scum

[T7g]

Well said sir, I especially liked the first paragraph

Re:Scum

[commodore64_love]

"Stupidity" is correct. Isn't 185 pounds equal to $350?

Even if I was a complete luddite, before I spent that kind of money I'd either (a) buy a brand new computer for the same price or (b) Do nothing and live with the virus. But I guess "a fool and his money are soon parted" still applies even today.

Re:Scum

[morgan_greywolf]

Yeah. What morally responsible individual would ruin the good name of Microsoft?

I'm not sure, but I think you just called Microsoft's development staff "morally irresponsible." That's not very nice. ;)

Re:Scum

[grumbel]

Yes, but they are non-violent and require the cooperation of their "victims".

So does robbing somebody with an unloaded gun.

Re:Scum

[causality]

They disincentivize ignorance and stupidity by making it more painful, just like those natural pests disincentivize improper sanitation./quote?

Yet the only reason why we care to disincentivize ignorance and stupidity is because those scammers exist. Your logic is viciously circular. They need to exist to protect people from themselves?

I'm glad you raised this point. It's a good one, to be sure.

Being wise and savvy and seeking understanding is the natural state of human beings. The widespread ignorance and stupidity is what I might call "unnaturally natural". The proof is that by not viewing ignorance and gullibility as problems in need of correction, people leave themselves vulnerable to this type of scam. The scammers do not create this vulnerability. They merely capitalize on it. They see that something is out of order and that this creates room for them to operate. Otherwise their dubious "enterprise" would never get off the ground.

The ignorance and stupidity is a disease state. The scammers are the disease that can thrive in the environment of that disease state. They are symptoms, not the actual problem. It's absurdity itself to say that the only reason to eschew ignorance and stupidity is because these scammers exist. Have you no concept of how much better our world would be if ignorance and stupidity were not such powerful forces in shaping it?

The personal shortcomings that scammers exploit go far, far beyond computing. They also play important roles in politics, the economy, interpersonal relationships, you name it. It just so happens that computing provides a convenient entry point for that ignorance and stupidity to come under attack since it is generally encouraged in other realms like politics.

Re:Scum

[djlemma]

"Stupidity" is correct. Isn't 185 pounds equal to $350?

Even if I was a complete luddite, before I spent that kind of money I'd either (a) buy a brand new computer for the same price or (b) Do nothing and live with the virus. But I guess "a fool and his money are soon parted" still applies even today.

185 pounds is more like $280. The Pound and the Euro haven't been doing all that well lately... And the Canadian dollar and US dollar are almost equal again.

Re:Scum

[commodore64_love]

This is what the government-run schools are supposed to eliminate: Ignorance. But instead they ended-up glorified babysitting zones.

Re:Scum

[Anonymous Coward]

185 pounds to someone living in Brittan gets you about as much as 185 dollars living here in America. Just because our currency is shit compared to the pound doesn't mean it costs them more too.

Re:Scum

[asdf7890]

"Stupidity" is correct. Isn't 185 pounds equal to $350?

More like $280 at current exchange rates according to Google, though that may need to be adjusted to account for cost-of-living factors to be properly representative of the equivalent cost. Not an amount to be unconcerned about in any case though.

Re:Scum

[morgan_greywolf]

So, what you're saying is that we need scammers to scam people to protect them scammers?

I gotta better idea. Why don't we just start telling everyone that they can rid their PCs of viruses and malware if they scrub it in the bathtub with the power on?

Re:Scum

[sakdoctor]

Whilst I am going to have to flog myself for XKCD linking...

WE RUN LINUX!

Re:Scum

[causality]

They are far worse than that and it is definitely by careful design.

In fact I'd say that the public schools bear more responsibility than anyone else for the widespread ignorance and gullibility that these scammers feed on. A truly tough-minded population familiar with critical thinking, logic, and argumentation would not so easily fall for these scams. They also wouldn't support anything our politicians of today are pushing for. So you see that'd be really inconvenient for our increasingly centralized society *spits*.

Re:Scum

[dcollins]

"Yes, but they are non-violent and require the cooperation of their 'victims'... They provide a limiting function. They disincentivize ignorance and stupidity by making it more painful, just like those natural pests disincentivize improper sanitation. By becoming knowledgable and savvy, the 'victim' can have total control over whether he/she is successfully targeted."

You're a fucking sociopath. Have a little empathy or fuck off.

Re:Scum

[drinkypoo]

I gotta better idea. Why don't we just start telling everyone that they can rid their PCs of viruses and malware if they scrub it in the bathtub with the power on?

Truth is one, paths are many.

Re:Scum

[Anonymous Coward]

best xkcd ever!

Re:Scum

[Anonymous Coward]

Criminy, you read one book of economics and one book of evolution and soon you start thinking criminals serve a natural -- even desirable -- function or niche. I will not be surprised if this meme trickles down to the criminal underclass and is used to justify this sort of scammery. There isn't a fixed level of criminality, nor ignorance, and it is desirable to decrease both.

We all warn our children of certain dangers much like we warn our computer illiterate friends and family of how not to get suckered online. We don't leave them to the parasites so they can learn a few-hundred dollar "lesson" when they can learn it for free.

Re:Scum

[sorak]

Doesn't that seem like circular logic to you? Con artists are good because they teach us not to trust con artists?

Re:Scum

[drinkypoo]

The government-run schools in the USA are designed to be indoctrination stations and they function brilliantly. They produce a steady stream of soldiers and criminals in addition to undesirables like journalists and human rights lawyers. Meanwhile, those who know utilize private tutors, home schooling, and/or private schooling so that their children receive an education in using their minds.

Re:Scum

[DriedClexler]

And through exploitation of that charming, authoritative British accent, no less! I mean, who wouldn't believe someone who called you up sounding like Simon Cowell or Tony Blair?

Re:Scum

[cyber0ne]

So does robbing somebody with an unloaded gun.

The threat of violence is much closer to "violent" than "non-violent." If one believes that the person asking for (or demanding, in your example) money has a firearm, compliance with their demands would probably be the wise choice. I would, however, characterize a willingness to give money to anybody who calls me on the phone as an unwise choice.

Re:Scum

[lgw]

Wow, a pro-union teacher believes that saying "critical thinking is a basic survival skill" is sociopathic. I'm shocked - shocked I tell you.

Re:Scum

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, there are suckers, but stealing is stealing, even if the victim is easily duped. This is just a way that crooks can justify their actions. A person was dumb enough to not doublecheck a receipt, so two zeroes were punched on the card reader than one, and it is the victim's fault for not doing so. A person was handed a $5 instead of a $10, and it was their fault they didn't say anything. A car door is unlocked so the person was dumb enough to invite a thief in to slash the seats and steal the airbags. A door of a house is unlocked so it is the homeowner's fault that they got burglarized. A woman was dressed provocatively, so it is her fault that she got raped, and so on.

It doesn't matter if the victim is a blithering idiot and hands over a blank check. Fraud is still fraud. People who say that they are pouring chlorine in the gene pool by taking advantage of idiots are still crooks and are breaking the law regardless.

Re:Scum

[Culture20]

Yes, but they are non-violent and require the cooperation of their "victims".

So does robbing somebody with an unloaded gun.

Only if you tell the victim that your gun isn't loaded up front. Then you're relying on their own mind to imagine a scenario where your gun really is loaded, but you're lying for some reason. That way, the threat of violence is entirely imagined on their part.

Re:Scum

[dwiget001]

This is what the government-run schools are supposed to eliminate: Ignorance. But instead they ended-up glorified babysitting zones.

In a more ideal world, the government should the be convicted of fraud and told to keep their hands out of educating our youth.

An educated public, in the minds of those running governments, are a very dangerous thing, unless they are "educated the right way"....

Re:Scum

[the_humeister]

I don't know where these people are going to school. I went to a public school in the USA, went to a decent university, grad school, and now job that actually utilizes critical thinking skills. I, and my high school friends, didn't turn out to be the fools that you would assume that we would be by going through public schools at each step. It's more likely that being ignorant is the easy way out and that's what people would rather choose instead.

Re:Scum

[grumbel]

The threat of violence is much closer to "violent" than "non-violent."

There is no violence, the gun isn't loaded, it might even be a toy gun and heck if you would have knowledge of weapons you might even be able to tell that from a distance.

Keep in mind that those scamers generally (not sure about this specific case) don't ask nicely for the money and then disappear. Most of the time they will threaten you with overdue fines and all kinds of legal lingo that bad things will happen if you don't pay quick, they might also call repeatably, sent you letters and whatever. You might still not call it violence, but when you threaten people with expensive lawsuits, thats close enough for me, even if the threat is in reality void. Just as with the fake violence that might simply be hard to tell for somebody not knowledgeable in the field.

This is plain and simply fraud and should be a crime like any other. Its quite sad that people can build business models around such scams and get away with it, your average bank robber makes less money then they do.

Re:Scum

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that if we eliminated public schools the masses would continue to be ignorant, just for different reasons.

Re:Scum

[mounthood]

Really now, all it would take is a small amount of healthy skepticism. Let's assume the scammer is so good that there are no other "tells". A user would only need to say to the scammer "Microsoft found a virus on my PC did they? Let me get back to you" and then call Microsoft. As unpleasant as calling Microsoft would be, it beats giving money to a scammer. It's the same well-known principle used for dealing with suspicious communications from banks. If you don't know if that e-mail is really from your bank because you don't have the technical skill to determine that, then you ignore it and call your bank at their published phone number. Then it doesn't matter if it's the most clever phishing e-mail in the world.

It doesn't exactly require a genius to understand these things. It just requires that one not leap blindly into what they do not understand while expecting a good result. That's general advice for life, not just computing. I personally believe that almost everyone is capable of understanding these simple concepts, they just can't be bothered to think. Perhaps they need a little incentive. Perhaps by providing one the scammers are serving a purpose, even though I fully agree with you that they are scumbags. That's why I'd liken them to a carrion-eater or a parasite.

That's not an accurate description of how smart and savvy people deal with this: People evaluate the message and the context it was delivered in. If you get an email from a co-worker while at work and that's a normal, expected way of communication with the sender you don't call "their published phone number" to confirm you have the right person. The context for evaluating trust includes the medium of delivery. In this case it's the phone and the internet. And people are new to the internet. They haven't figured out the patterns for evaluating the trustworthiness of electronic events (if you will.) That's why this scam works in the first place. It's not just praying on those who fall for any old lie, but those who are feel confused about computers.

Re:Scum

[Zen_Sorcere]

What public schools did you go to? Any? Because I went through the public school system growing up, in several different cities and states (navy brat; family moved all the time), and I did just fine. No criminal or soldier elements for me, nor the friends I had made in the later grades. I feel there is an undeserved slight on the public school system...I'm not sure if it's from the media focusing on inner-city, run down schools, or from some Right leaning political propoganda. Myself, I think home schooling is a horrible idea, and those I've known to be home schooled are more sociopath-leaning than any other people I know.

Re:Scum

[Drakkenmensch]

No matter how badly your computer, home or car gets damaged, there is no service in the world that will spontaneously, out of the blue, show up at your door to offer to fix it. They will all wait for you to call them first.

Some years ago, I got one such phone call from someone who said they were my bank manager, and they needed my account info to prevent a possible fraud attempt. I knew something was up, so I grinned and immediately offered to show up IN PERSON in order to assist them combat this fraud. The scammer panicked and offered a dozen reasons why it would be better to just give it over the phone. I said "it's no bother, I live across the street from you guys, I can see your front door from my window right now!" He of course immediately hung up and never called back. If he had access to my banking file legitimately, he'd have seen my home address was nowhere NEAR the place.

Re:Scum

[Lord Ender]

Your logic is perfect. These scammers really do serve a purpose, as do rapists. If only their "victims" were acting less sexy and vulnerable! This will provide them an incentive.

Re:Scum

[DavidTC]

As I have said before, it should be a hard and fast rule that you don't give information, and certainly don't give money, to people who contact you. Ever. Period.

It's truly mind-boggling that this isn't taught in high school.

Re:Scum

[causality]

"Yes, but they are non-violent and require the cooperation of their 'victims'... They provide a limiting function. They disincentivize ignorance and stupidity by making it more painful, just like those natural pests disincentivize improper sanitation. By becoming knowledgable and savvy, the 'victim' can have total control over whether he/she is successfully targeted."

You're a fucking sociopath. Have a little empathy or fuck off.

I have enough empathy to be honest about their weakness. Would you prefer I help them to remain in denial so that they forever remain victims? It's amazing how angry people sometimes become when you tell a victim that he/she doesn't have to be a victim anymore. You'd think that would be welcome news, a message of hope.

I get it alright. I understand your point of view while you fail to grasp mine. You think that when I say "you were vulnerable to this scam because of a weakness or shortcoming, but that can be corrected and you can eliminate your vulnerability" that I am assigning blame. You think I am pointing a finger and am happy to see this happen. Not really. I merely accept the futility of trying to catch and shut down all present and future scammers and take instead an approach you might call "harden the targets".

I also reject the notion that an individual has to be a helpless victim, at the mercy of anyone who would wish to do him/her harm. To tell people that they are helpless victims who can do nothing to better their own situation, who will always be exploited by criminals, who are completely screwed since the regulators won't protect them and they cannot protect themselves, well, I say that is sociopathy. It's telling them that they are forever doomed to just bend over and take it. Does it ever occur to you that this victim mentality is precisely why we have so many petty criminals?

My longing to live in a kinder, wiser, more sane world is beyond my power of expressing it. Really, there are not words for how badly I wish to see that. The way to get from here to there is to be honest about our weaknesses and our problems, to seek realistic solutions to them. This absolutely includes the notion that an individual can better himself or herself, that honesty about one's shortcomings and understanding one's weaknesses is the first step towards overcoming them. It's not "blaming the victim". It's "empowering the victim". And you can't stand it, can you?

You can call me names some more if it makes you feel better. When you do that, all I see is an equal who is extremely determined to be an inferior. If you should get over that you won't receive an "I told you so" from me. You'd put a smile on my face.

Re:Scum

[nuckfuts]

They disincentivize ignorance and stupidity by making it more painful...

Ya, because stupid people actively choose to be stupid. For the incentives.

While you're enlightening us all on how stupidity and ignorance should disappear with a little effort on the part of the affected, why don't you give us your similar insights into how homelessness and unemployment would be fixed if people just tried harder to get jobs?

Pull your head out of your ass and take a good look around. This is human society, full of stupid people, lazy people, gullible people, criminals, con artists, victims, etc. Rationalizing about how you think people should be is not insightful. It's naive.

Re:Scum

[Anonymous Coward]

I get it alright. I understand your point of view while you fail to grasp mine. You think that when I say "you were vulnerable to this scam because of a weakness or shortcoming, but that can be corrected and you can eliminate your vulnerability" that I am assigning blame.

Bingo! You are, just like how you obviously blame rape victims. You do, right? You just said you did. I just said you did. Look up. Now look back at me. I'm on a boat. I HAVE NOW WILLINGLY STOPPED READING YOUR POST BECAUSE THAT WOULD BE INCONVENIENT TO MY OPINIONS.

(insert some long, rambling, well-offtopic rape dissertation here)

Re:Scum

[insertwackynamehere]

Um actually it would be violent because coercing someone by displaying a firearm has the implicit attachment of "do what I say or I will shoot you". If you fuck around and hold someone up with a toy gun and think you can get cutesy with the police saying "hang on officers let me remember just what those ACLU videos told me about getting arrested oh and by the way it was a toy gun lol so you guys cant even get me in trouble" you would be in for a shitty surprise. Fucking around with toy guns can get you in trouble; for example making them appear real and threatening someone with violence is also illegal even if you had no intention or ability to follow through.

Re:Scum

[XSpud]

I personally believe that almost everyone is capable of understanding these simple concepts, they just can't be bothered to think.

Or perhaps you can't imagine that some people gain benefits from taking a less risk-averse attitude towards life than you appear to have. Just a thought.

Re:Scum

[insertwackynamehere]

Yeah but I mean you could also say that it is good that a 16 year old learned not to wear cocktail dresses after a certain time on a certain block too. A bit extreme, I know, but people shouldn't have to learn anything like that nor should they be expected to be happy about having a worldier view now that they have fallen victim. Yeah, people should educate and make it clear these things are bad ideas but it's never the person's fault whose focus isn't on the terrible things that could happen to them that by no fault of their own they aren't even entirely aware of.

Re:Scum

[insertwackynamehere]

It's a bit easier to act like weeding people out based on how they fall victim to crime is a good thing when you are a hundred percent sure that you wouldn't fall for the crime discussed. On Slashdot, people act like they are smarter than crime because they don't fall for phone scams and banner ads but maybe they would fall victim to bullets that weren't aimed at them but.. oh shit look you walked in the wrong area at the wrong time of night! Well aren't you glad those nice guntoting thugs taught you a valuable lesson? Plus so much criminal shit happens to people who don't deserve it, but hey anyone dumb enough to not know how to use a computer (aka has a different focus in life then me) deserves to get ripped off.

Re:Scum

[causality]

I don't know where these people are going to school. I went to a public school in the USA, went to a decent university, grad school, and now job that actually utilizes critical thinking skills. I, and my high school friends, didn't turn out to be the fools that you would assume that we would be by going through public schools at each step. It's more likely that being ignorant is the easy way out and that's what people would rather choose instead.

I'm grateful that you and some others are raising such good points in this discussion. I usually enjoy participating in Slashdot but not usually this much. For that I am glad, for this is truly stimulating.

What I would point out here is a particular disconnect. My high school also taught some critical thinking skills, though in narrow and very specific applications. By that I mean, they were utilized only at the request of some kind of authority figure. There always had to be a "gun to the head" in the form of a failing grade or an angry boss at work. This is still a passive approach to life.

My same fellow students who took the same courses I did were still extremely suggestible and susceptible to the propaganda techniques of advertising. Despite good grades in any classes that discussed critical thinking, they still valued conformity much more than individualism. That tells me they were able to mechanically go through the motions but did not embrace critical thinking in any real way. They did not take it to heart and see its tremendous value. They merely paid lip service to it in order to appease a teacher or a boss.

It's the difference between passively waiting for a teacher or other person to decide to show you a skill, versus seeking it yourself for its own sake. It's the folly of believing that critical thought and being tough-minded is all about passing a class or doing a job. It's a failure to comprehend the true meaning of those things, seeing only their surface in the form of utilitarian application, a memorized series of steps, a procedure, something you are required to do rather than something you gladly embrace.

Most of all, the majority of my fellow students viewed education as something they received from school. They did not see schooling as a supplement to their own personal quest to better themselves even when no one is looking. In short, they were still dependent on others to show them how to think rather than discovering it for themselves by hungering and thirsting for it. That dependence is exactly what public schools want to instill, even while they teach the skills that could otherwise overcome it. In that way they make a sort of mockery of those skills.

Ignorance is not really the easy way out; it just has a certain allure because it involves less up-front effort. I tell you the truth, the avoidable suffering that the ignorant experience is far worse than the effort of bettering oneself. So are the network effects on society when you have so many ignorant people.

Re:Scum

[Anonymous Coward]

Public schools tend to suck sure. But they suck at everything, including any sort of indoctrination, most of my friends said the pledge of allegiance dutifully for 10+ years only to never even do it once since the last time it was "required" at the start of class, and even then we'd sometimes mumble and talk during it, throw stuff at each other, and etc.. Public schools don't create soldiers (as for criminals it's the kid's fault not the schools that it happens) for anything (even the military, people who go out of patriotic duty would go anyways, people who go cause it seems like fun go anyways, people who go for the benefits go anyways, etc..) Do you think the average public school teacher is attempting to indoctrinate anyone? Sure textbooks may "try" to indoctrinate children, but the kids don't listen and the teachers don't care to teach that well either. They're not going to learn stuff from a textbook weather it's chemistry or creationism.

Re:Scum

[Pentium100]

Yes, stealing is stealing, rape is rape etc and the criminal is to blame, but:

If I left a lot of cash in my car (plainly visible) and the doors unlocked and the money got stolen then a lot of people would ridicule me for doing it even though the thief is to blame because he still broke the law, but I should have anticipated it and hid the money or taken it with me. There is a reason why a bank keeps the money in a safe and why the clients would blame the bank if it kept the money in an unlocked box and the money got stolen.

Re:Scum

[causality]

Criminy, you read one book of economics and one book of evolution and soon you start thinking criminals serve a natural -- even desirable -- function or niche. I will not be surprised if this meme trickles down to the criminal underclass and is used to justify this sort of scammery. There isn't a fixed level of criminality, nor ignorance, and it is desirable to decrease both.

I did not justify it. Indeed, I agreed that these criminals are scumbags and made that very clear. I said people should learn to stop enabling it. It is precisely because they are scumbags that do harm that we should address the things that make their crimes so easy to commit. It just so happens that putting all of our energies into declaring what scumbags they are doesn't teach victims how to stop being victims.

Incidentally, none of this comes from a book I've read. It comes from my ability to observe the world around me. When you address me you are dealing with an individual, not someone who needs others to articulate his concepts for him. If it were otherwise, those concepts would not truly be my own. Let's be honest about what you did there. It's an attempt to belittle. It's a form of hubris that serves no purpose as it is not necessary for disputing my position.

We all warn our children of certain dangers much like we warn our computer illiterate friends and family of how not to get suckered online. We don't leave them to the parasites so they can learn a few-hundred dollar "lesson" when they can learn it for free.

I draw a big distinction between children and the adults who have the bank accounts and credit cards that are used to pay these scammers.

The rest is the difference between giving a man a fish so he eats for a day, and teaching him to fish so he can always feed himself. If I warn people about this specific scam, it will not do much to equip them to recognize other, different scams in the future. If I address the root of their ignorance, that does equip them to say "you know, there's just something funny about this and I'm not giving out money or personal info until I know who I'm dealing with" even when dealing with a new scam that hasn't become well-known yet.

Like I said, someone cold-calls you and claims that Microsoft found a virus on your computer, the solution to that is to hang up and call Microsoft and ask them about it. No technical skill is required for that, just a shedding of naivete. If I really care about my friends and family, then I don't sit there and do nothing while they remain naive and vulnerable, ready to be victimized by the next asshat to come along. I'd much rather get to the root of why they are vulnerable than hack at the branches and limbs of every possible different scam to warn them against.

Re:Scum

[Pentium100]

The context for evaluating trust includes the medium of delivery. In this case it's the phone and the internet. And people are new to the internet. They haven't figured out the patterns for evaluating the trustworthiness of electronic events (if you will.) That's why this scam works in the first place. It's not just praying on those who fall for any old lie, but those who are feel confused about computers.

Still, if someone wants me to give them a lot of money (and 180GBP is a lot) I won't blindly do it without any verification, no matter the medium.

In my country there are telephone scams that work on stupid people. Basically someone calls you and says that your kid/spouse/etc got in an accident or was arrested and needs a lot of money right now. In cash. If they manage to guess the right person (obviously you won't believe that your son got in an accident if you don't have kids/have only daughters/all your sons are at home with you) then usually the person called runs to a bank, takes out the sum asked and delivers it. Stupid.

Well, if someone said that my family member got into an accident, I would first call the said family member. I would also try to figure out if the call is a scam by trying to trip the caller up ("Really? What if I told you that I do not have a son?"). If someone called and said that my family member was arrested that I would call the police to verify.

Re:Scum

[mcgrew]

Your attitude is just plain wrong.

Yes, but they are non-violent

There are worse things than violence. I'd rather be punched in the face than ripped off for thousands of dollars. There is no difference between an armed robbery and an unarmed robbery; stealing is stealing whether you use a gun or a computer.

require the cooperation of their "victims".

Trickery is not co-operation. I've met some damned smooth fraudsters in my time. And the fraudsters make one suspicious of the honest as well as the scum; I caused some embarrassment Sunday Night because of my unwillingness to trust caused by my being taken before.

They disincentivize ignorance and stupidity by making it more painful

EVERYONE is ignorant. Nobody knows everything. ANYONE can be fooled, even you, Mister Untouchable Knowitall. And stupidity is incurable; you sound like one of those people who would kill deformed babies because of their deformity.

just like those natural pests disincentivize improper sanitation.

There's your ignorance showing, son. No amount of sanitation will rid you of fleas and ticks, nor will it rid you of their diseases.

It doesn't exactly require a genius to understand these things.

Half of the world's population have two digit IQs, and are easy prey for the other half. If I were dishonest I'd have no trouble at all getting rich. You would have all those "subhumans" killed? I'd rather the world do away with heartless bastards like scammers, armed robbers, and you.

How that inaccurate flamebait got modded +4 insightful is beyond me.

Re:Scum

[Shompol]

Small scale con artists teach you a gullibility lesson for a small charge of $199. I call that money well spent. There are much bigger sharks all around you, and if you had no lessons, it's gona cost you. Examples:
- used car salesmen charging $10k over the market price
- politicians promising tax cuts and free beer.
- real estate brokers giving "best price for special you", etc.

Re:Scum

[causality]

Really now, all it would take is a small amount of healthy skepticism. Let's assume the scammer is so good that there are no other "tells". A user would only need to say to the scammer "Microsoft found a virus on my PC did they? Let me get back to you" and then call Microsoft. As unpleasant as calling Microsoft would be, it beats giving money to a scammer. It's the same well-known principle used for dealing with suspicious communications from banks. If you don't know if that e-mail is really from your bank because you don't have the technical skill to determine that, then you ignore it and call your bank at their published phone number. Then it doesn't matter if it's the most clever phishing e-mail in the world.

It doesn't exactly require a genius to understand these things. It just requires that one not leap blindly into what they do not understand while expecting a good result. That's general advice for life, not just computing. I personally believe that almost everyone is capable of understanding these simple concepts, they just can't be bothered to think. Perhaps they need a little incentive. Perhaps by providing one the scammers are serving a purpose, even though I fully agree with you that they are scumbags. That's why I'd liken them to a carrion-eater or a parasite.

That's not an accurate description of how smart and savvy people deal with this: People evaluate the message and the context it was delivered in. If you get an email from a co-worker while at work and that's a normal, expected way of communication with the sender you don't call "their published phone number" to confirm you have the right person. The context for evaluating trust includes the medium of delivery. In this case it's the phone and the internet. And people are new to the internet. They haven't figured out the patterns for evaluating the trustworthiness of electronic events (if you will.) That's why this scam works in the first place. It's not just praying on those who fall for any old lie, but those who are feel confused about computers.

If I am new to something and realize I am ignorant about it, then I proceed very carefully. I don't just blindly leap ahead and pray that nothing bad will happen. That'd be foolish. Instead, I look before I leap. That's because I know my limitations. I know when I am operating outside my areas of expertise. If I were new to the Internet and didn't understand how it works, that's all the more reason to be suspicious of unsolicited communications (like cold-calls) that arise from it.

Thus, ignorance about the Internet still wouldn't make me a target for these scammers. My gradual overcoming of that ignorance over time would be evidenced by taking fewer and fewer extra steps to address my suspicions as I became more skilled and knowledgable. I wouldn't have to keep looking up so many things or asking so many questions prior to proceeding with whatever it is I am trying to do. But let me emphasize: at no point between ignorance and mastery would I just blindly leap into something I know nothing about.

No, what many people are doing is different. They honestly believe that they can use what they do not remotely understand and that nothing bad will ever happen as a result. That's absurd. There is nothing in life that confirms this belief. It does not come from observation of nature or of human behavior. They refuse to acknowledge that this is risky behavior, and that they assume a risk when they do it. That's why I used the word "stupid" to distinguish this from mere ignorance. When people engage in risky behavior and it doesn't work out well for them, and they are surprised by this, I do not regard them as victims of anything except their own unwillingness to face their limitations and weaknesses.

Re:Scum

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder of you would change your mind if your 70 year old mother signs over your inheritance to the nice man on the telephone

Re:Scum

[causality]

Your logic is perfect. These scammers really do serve a purpose, as do rapists. If only their "victims" were acting less sexy and vulnerable! This will provide them an incentive.

Rape is a violent crime using physical force or threat of physical force. As such it does not require the victim's active participation. That is why I made it very clear I was talking about non-violent crimes that require the active cooperation of the victim in order to take place.

You had an emotional knee-jerk reaction and this caused you to disregard the specific written conditions I was clearly discussing. It happens. Your choice now is to make an excuse for it or to get upset at me for pointing that out, or, to recognize this as the unproductive mistake that it was that contributed nothing to the discussion. That's up to you.

Note, however, that I absolutely predicted that someone would do this, which is why I bothered at all to mention non-violent crimes requiring active participation of the victim. The predictability of your statement and the fact that I already addressed it should tell you something about its usefulness and its ability to edify.

Re:Scum

[mcgrew]

Well, not taking care of this is indeed morally irresponsible to the point of reprehensibility.

Re:Scum

[leenks]

Yes quite right - David Cameron and his public school chums have a lot to answer for ;-)

Re:Scum

[TDyl]

Those of us that are British and hate those two extra scumbags; I mean, old chap, it's all well and bad being scammed by a scammer, but to have allowed our political and media lives to be scammed by Bliar and Cowell, God, we must be a soft touch (or a complete bunch of morons).

Re:Scum

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because our currency is shit compared to the pound

The irony is killing me here. The parent poster made an error in his conversion over valuing the pound significantly as the dollars has risen considerably since the time his pronouncement would have been correct. And the sibling thread to this debating at length the declining quality of public schools. I love you.

Re:Scum

[Bengie]

Your logic is perfect. These scammers really do serve a purpose, as do rapists. If only their "victims" were acting less sexy and vulnerable! This will provide them an incentive.

The only difference is the rapist MAKES you do something, the social "leech" just tries to persuade you.

Re:Scum

[Vancorps]

The problem is that public schools are driven by local interest groups some of which have been corrupted by a number of methods such as religious bias in Texas to budgetary bias almost everywhere. Since schools have been given more and more students without associated increases in funding you end up with schools cutting back on everything.

Beyond all that is the lack of parental responsibility. There seems to be two major poles here, the helicopter parents that hover over their kids all the time suing whenever Johnny doesn't get straight As because of course it's the teacher's fault that he got a question wrong. Then there are the growing number of people that don't care and just plop their kids in front of the TV. Without parents to reinforce and augment lessons in school you can't expect kids to grow up well rounded by themselves.

A tough-minded population still exists and they even attend public schools, they were just fortunate enough to have adult influences to guide them properly. Where I work today it's rare to find people will to take responsibility for anything. As a result, disproportionate amounts of the work are done by the people willing to take the risk. That means I just pulled 28 straight days of 18 hour work days, sometimes even more. Last night was the first time in almost a month I got more than 5 hours of sleep. Now I'm not going to roll over and let that happen again but people needed to step up to get it done and I was one of a handful of people that met the challenge. We're not special, we just have a strong work ethic and aren't afraid to take responsibility for our actions even when they aren't perfect.

Public schools vary greatly from region to region as far as quality and I think that reflects regions where parents are actively involved. Just like there are good public schools in inner cities there are good public schools in rural America. When parents take the time to parent their kids they can accomplish a lot.

Re:Scum

[Lord Ender]

Visiting "that neighborhood" is active participation. Drinking the drink someone gave you is "active participation."

Your post is absolute drivel. Scamming old people with Alzheimer's disease out of hundreds of dollars does not serve a social purpose. It is bad in any light. You are a moron.

Re:Scum

[Anonymous Coward]

I actually had this very call to my house in the states and had the pleasure of pulling that line on them. The other was that they were soliciting a do-not-call number and would be receiving a complaint via the FTC (or whoever it is who deals with that).

Re:Scum

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod this up (my kingdom for a mod point)..

John Taylor Gatto's ideas were critical to the decisions we made about homeschooling our children. A genuinely revolutionary thinker, he gave this speech on the occasion of being named N.Y. "Teacher of the Year" - basically a finger in the eye to the system he was forced to serve.

Re:Scum

[Naturalis Philosopho]

Being wise and savvy and seeking understanding is the natural state of human beings.

Huh? What planet do you live on? Your entire argument today is flawed due to your original premise being off. These scammer may, indeed, serve a purpose of sorts, but not for reasons you give. The natural state of most men is willfull ignorance as they subsist in spirit as they struggle to meet the basic needs of survival for their bodies. Wonder might be a natural state, but wisdom, savvy, and understanding of self and nature are luxuries that few even feel the need to strive for, and which far fewer have the capacity to reach (one even, let alone all of these states). In fact, that these scumbags would prey upon the weak of their society in the manner they do is evidence that they don't understand how breaking the social contract in this way harms them by damaging the tenuous trust system upon which social interactions are based. Don't mistake blindly stumbling through life, on the part of the scammer or the scammee, despite either having found a niche to fill, as plan, wisdom, or (especially) desireable. Down that road leads unneeded suffering, more than you'll find already in life.

The ignorance and stupidity is a disease state.

Again, don't mistake base/default state for disease. Societally, ignorance and stupidity are a scourge or blight, but disease requires contagion of sorts. A default state merely requires being born. Also, the way our society is set up, disincentivization doesn't work. If the incentive of better jobs, an easier life, or even self-fulfillment hasn't already incentivized someone toward knowledge or wisdom, than why would being scammed work? Despite the cries of both the recently unemployed and our politicians, the safety net in the developed world is so deep and soft that fear of "failure" is not strong enough to act as strong incentive anymore.

Re:Scum

[mcgrew]

It's worse than that; his logic is deeply flawed. Con artists teach us not to trust ANYONE, and that is not a good thing.

Re:Scum

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, a pro-union teacher believes that saying "critical thinking is a basic survival skill" is sociopathic. I'm shocked - shocked I tell you.

IMHO, this distortion is beneath you Igw. As you should know, there are ways to teach people critical thinking skills that don't require con artists or fraud. In my case, four years on the debate squad at my public school worked for me.

Re:Scum

[isomer1]

> They disincentivize ignorance and stupidity...

That strikes me as a touch cynical. You might argue the victims are naive, but I see no grounds for calling them stupid.

How many times on slashdot have we as a collective proposed having infected PCs simply cut off the network by the ISP. "Of course of course", we argue, "they would be given a warning prior to cutting the line." Well how do you think such a scenario would play out in real life? It would be damn near identical to this scam. The ISP would call the client and inform them of the issue, then any real ISP is going to refer the client to a 'preferred vendor', and plenty of those are going to be the in-house guys at the ISP/store hybrids here in the midwest US.

Now maybe you can argue this just falls under the general umbrella 'never trust a cold call', but even that isn't reasonable. You propose that they simply hang up and call up Microsoft... who pray tell do you expect them to call? Corporations in the real world have divisions spread all over the place, with no particular expectation that every division knows what every other division is up to. Suppose you DID receive a real call from Microsoft that you doubted, who of their bagillion employees worldwide would you call back? Do you honestly expect the front line support to know what anyone up the chain is doing?

Re:Scum

[Anonymous Coward]

You and I both agree that scammers are scumbags. Good, I already saw that from your first post.

I didn't say that you justified scamming, but in my eyes you came close, by saying that scammers disincentivize ignorance by making it painful, and that perhaps people need a little incentive because they can't be bothered to think, and that perhaps scammers serve this purpose. I find the notion distasteful.

I am also not arguing for giving a man a fish, I am arguing for educating people rather than letting parasites painfully push them in the right direction.

Basically I disagree with little except your attitude towards victims.

Other than that, thank you for your reply. Good day sir.

Re:Scum

[commodore64_love]

>>>[public] schools have been given more and more students without associated increases in funding

Say what? My local school increases taxes every year - it's now $3500 just for school tax alone. Nationwide the average public school now spends almost three times more, per student, than a private school. Never has public spending been at such a high level.

Re:Scum

[Anonymous Coward]

I have enough empathy to be honest about their weakness. Would you prefer I help them to remain in denial so that they forever remain victims? It's amazing how angry people sometimes become when you tell a victim that he/she doesn't have to be a victim anymore. You'd think that would be welcome news, a message of hope.

Except you are doing nothing to help people either identify or overcome their weaknesses before they are harmed. Instead, you are creating a baroque rationalization to legitimize your own indifference to the harm being committed to a fellow human being, as gullible and foolish as they may be. This is why your position isn't a message of hope because it boils down to "Meh, why should I care what happens to those losers anyway?"

I also reject the notion that an individual has to be a helpless victim, at the mercy of anyone who would wish to do him/her harm. To tell people that they are helpless victims who can do nothing to better their own situation, who will always be exploited by criminals, who are completely screwed since the regulators won't protect them and they cannot protect themselves, well, I say that is sociopathy. It's telling them that they are forever doomed to just bend over and take it. Does it ever occur to you that this victim mentality is precisely why we have so many petty criminals?

My longing to live in a kinder, wiser, more sane world is beyond my power of expressing it. Really, there are not words for how badly I wish to see that. The way to get from here to there is to be honest about our weaknesses and our problems, to seek realistic solutions to them. This absolutely includes the notion that an individual can better himself or herself, that honesty about one's shortcomings and understanding one's weaknesses is the first step towards overcoming them. It's not "blaming the victim". It's "empowering the victim". And you can't stand it, can you?

I see, so it's either a nanny-state or the jungle with no other options available? How about you as an informed and savvy computer user, who by their own admission longs "to live live in a kinder, wiser, more sane world is beyond my power of expressing it", could help by giving a class on how to spot potential computer fraud? No matter what your situation is currently, you probably have the ability to teach people like this how not to be a victim. For example you could approach your local service/charity groups in your community or even a community college. If nothing else, you could record a tutorial on the subject and host it on a personal web-site.

In the unlikely event that you are already doing something to actually proactively help people, I offer a preemptive apology. Yet, due to the nature of your post it probably isn't warranted.

In conclusion, you certainly a have the right to your indifference towards others and no one can or should force you to care about anyone else. However, at least have the decency to be honest about your indifference and not use some faux-intellectual smoke-screen to pretend that you, or these criminals for that matter, are really doing the people harmed by fraud some sort of favor!

Re:Scum

[Vancorps]

Now compare that with the number of special needs kids and higher insurance costs for schools.

Now compare state to state, I grew up in Vermont so I'll put it against say North Carolina which is still better than Arizona. With such a disparate range of spending I don't see how you can make your statement with a straight face. Even in VT they've been cutting spending removing sports and music and paying teachers less which meant forcing out older teachers to make room for cheaper younger teachers.

Hell, here in Arizona the problem is probably the worst as they've cut lots of teaching positions. They are even cutting Kindergarten. The cuts don't end there.

Re:Scum

[Bengie]

"Scamming old people with Alzheimer's disease out of hundreds of dollars does not serve a social purpose."

If someone with Alzheimer's has access to money, someone just F'd up.

Most scams prey on people with NO COMMON SENSE. I mean.. really.. "Hi, I'm a long lost grand child of yours and I need $1000 to get home".. uhh.. OK...

Really, this is 95% of scams. The other 4.99% is "GET RICH QUICK!!!". It's the very very very small percent left over that is actually hard to tell if you gave any thought to it, like this guy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._Allen_Stanford .

"You are a moron" - not good debate etiquette and is a good way to reduce the effectiveness of your point.

P.S. My numbers were pulled out of my ass, but I'm sure people know what I mean.

Re:Scum

[causality]

Basically I disagree with little except your attitude towards victims.

It's the easy way or the hard way. The easy way is to observe the world around you, see that there is such exploitation and theft, see that the people to whom it happens suffer because of it, and then take steps to become a difficult target. The hard way is to do nothing and assume that such things can only happen to other people, get victimized, hate the scammers who victimized you, and never understand that you could have seen through them.

It's not just that there are people who exploit others and willfully do harm to them in order to selfishly enrich themselves. Just or not, this is what happens. You can equip people to better handle a world in which there is such evil, or you can shelter them from it and tell them that they're just victims and this is just the way things are, tough shit for them. I'd rather show people how to eliminate the naivete and other personal weaknesses that such criminals exploit. Not only does this safeguard the people who will learn, it also makes it harder to be a successful criminal. Everyone benefits from this.

I am also not arguing for giving a man a fish, I am arguing for educating people rather than letting parasites painfully push them in the right direction.

They are not mutually exclusive. Educate everyone who will be educated. However, some people will not learn though they are capable. They are stubborn and don't want to face their weaknesses. Consequence is their teacher because they would listen to no other. They chose the hard way.

I have had to learn some lessons the hard way. I admit this happened only because I was stubborn and thought I had all the answers when in fact I didn't. So I got screwed, and the suffering I experienced forced me to recognize that I was wrong. I don't blame anyone else for that because I am not a victim and refuse to become one. Instead, I saw that the suffering I experienced was entirely preventable, which was quite humbling. Instead, I take responsibility for what happens in my life. This will test your courage to be sure, but is absolutely worthwhile. It is precisely because I have had to learn things the hard way that I so dearly value being more proactive and learning them the easy way.

Some people have not yet come to understand this. It is definitely not my place to deprive them of such a valuable lesson if they do not wish to pursue the easy way. They make their choices and live with the results, just as I do. To convince them that they are helpless victims who shouldn't bother actively taking responsibility for their own lives is to forever deprive them of personal growth. That's a hell of a lot more important to me than the fact that some rather judgmental folks will think I'm some kind of bad guy for being honest about it. For all we know, the hard path is an essential and invaluable part of their path to personal growth.

Again it's not about blame. It's about being honest with yourself.

Re:Scum

[Lord Ender]

"Providing incentive" to not get raped, scammed, robbed, vandalized, etc. via raping, scamming, robbing, vandalizing, etc. is not a service to society. It is wicked to suggest as much, and anyone who does so does not deserve the courtesy of etiquette.

People like you could reason away genocide, I imagine. You're still wrong.

Re:Scum

[dcollins]

The fact that it takes you such a truckload full of words to rationalize your sociopathy is excellent evidence thereunto. Portraying yourself as a messianic figure earns bonus points. My only hope is that your time spent writing here saves some real person in the world from your attention.

Re:Scum

[Flyerman]

Adjusting for cost-of-living is pointless as long as all the states in USA use the same currency. You'll find some area in the US where the COL is the same as whatever area in England you choose.

Re:Scum

[Flyerman]

http://www.japanfortheuninvited.com/articles/ore-ore-sagi.html

Re:Scum

[DittoBox]

I pity the ignorant. I do not pity the willfully ignorant, but I pity the ignorant.

Although with some common sense one could tell this is a scam, your very presence here means your use and understanding of technology far exceeds that of the median average, in nearly any western country. You needn't be an ass about that.

Re:Scum

[PaganRitual]

My Dad stole ten bucks from my car one time utilising this exact same logic. Except the car was locked; he had a key for it as well. But he still told me that it was silly to leave money out where it was visible in the car because someone might steal it, so he took it to teach me a lesson. I'm sure that works in people's fantasy world where leaving something unlocked/exposed makes you even partly at fault for when it gets stolen.

Re:Scum

[Anonymous Coward]

I posted the GP. You don't need to tech savvy to realize that a cold call asking for money is probably a scam. How is this any different from someone coming to your door and telling you your roof is imminent danger of collapsing, then offering to fix it right then and there for a modest fee? I'm no expert on roofs, but I'd still be extremely skeptical.

Re:Scum

[manicb]

It's common assault in the UK, and I believe the law is similar in the US. (Sorry for wiki link, lots of references on legal sites but not as clear.) In assault the victim only has to believe that they can receive an injury, by malice or recklessness. If said injury is dealt, that is battery (or worse). When people say "assault" they usually mean "assault and battery" as it is rarely brought to court on its own.

Re:Scum

[Javagator]

have allowed our political and media lives to be scammed by Bliar and Cowell

I guess we could send you George Bush to set things straight.

Re:Scum

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm no expert on roofs, but I'd still be extremely skeptical.

OK wiseguy, how do you account for the water dripping from the ceiling then?

Re:Scum

[Anonymous Coward]

Where I live, playing with toy guns around cops will get you shot (unless the gun really does look like a stuffed pillow). Plastic guns must be surrendered, or the waver can get shot. Cast guns more so. Where I live, cops don't take chances. Hands up, drop the piece. The cop will determine whether its fake, but will assume its real up till then. You can wave it around like a toy, its just that real guns will fire, and the cops will feel bad. Safe, but bad.

Re:Scum

[TDyl]

oh, please don't, leave him cow-fiddling in Texas and trying to learn how to ride cycles and segways; besides, no-one in the UK would be able to understand his false drawl - imagine, he'd walk into a MD's for a burger and probably end up with a salad

Re:Scum

[totally bogus dude]

The story below that recently appeared on Not Always Right seems appropriate:

(A customer is wondering why her anti-virus is asking her to purchase the program.)
Me: "What is the name of your anti-virus?"
Customer: "It is [name of a well-known fake anti-virus program]."
Me: "Ma'am, that is a fake anti-virus. Do not purchase that program because it will not protect your computer."
Customer: "No! Why do you want me to disable my anti-virus? I will not get rid of it! It's keeping my computer safe! I already purchased it three times and it still wants me to pay again! All I want to know is how to stop it from asking me to pay!"

Re:Scum

[Anonymous Coward]

Fools?

My Mother got a phone-call from this company. Luckily, she called me and I told her to not do anything apart from purposefully waste their time if they call again.

You can't call the older people in our society 'fools' for not understanding technology that is the definition of 'confusing' and 'scary'. These guys did a great job of putting the fear of God into my Mother, they told her they were from Microsoft and that various horrible things were going to happen if she didn't disinfect her system.

Oh yes, her system was clean when I checked it. Technically, under British law we can do something. They are telling customers lies about their product. They are offering to disinfect clean systems by scaring the most vulnerable among us!

Re:Scum

[Bengie]

I'm not saying these scammers are "correct" in any sense, but damn... many of these scams are so stupid, it's like a 30 year old putting their hand in a blender and saying they didn't know it was going to hurt them.. I mean.. WTF?! really?!

Hi, I'm some random person you NEVER heard of before and have no reason to trust.. Give me money... OK..

OMG!! I was scammed!

I'm just saying, a lot of these people get what they deserve. Stupidity is no excuse.

Some scams are quite elaborate, but that's the corner case.

I would compare scams to Virii on Windows. Almost all people who "randomly" get virii, are actively clicking OK on every pop-up and downloading and installing every program that crosses their cursor.

Honest officer, the tree jumped out in front of me!

Re:Scum

[TheRaven64]

In the UK, toy guns must (by law) have an orange plastic thing covering the end of the barrel so that you can easily tell them apart from real guns, even at a distance while drunk.

Re:Scum

[AmiMoJo]

The problem is that there is no practical way for genuine anti-virus programs to differentiate themselves from the fake ones. How then are non-technical people supposed to spot these fakes? It may be obvious to us because of the way it behaves or because we googled it, but Joe Bloggs doesn't seem to realise that his PC lies to him, much less how to spot those lies.

Re:Scum

[c_jonescc]

We can't seek understanding of everything we encounter. I cannot become an expert in every aspect of my life that has a financial consequence. I like computers, so I am unlikely to fall for this sort of scam. However, when I take my car to the shop, I have to simply choose to trust the mechanic at some point. Same is true with the plumber.

I'm a curious person, and I generally ask enough questions to annoy people, but at some point I don't have the time to reach the necessary depth. Or, some things I just plain don't care about. Not many things, but enough that I pay service people, and have to trust them.

Finally, a con artist that isn't good at convincing people that they are trustworthy is not a very successful con artist.

Otherwise, I agree with you - widespread willful ignorance is sad, and leaves people with lesser and more victimized lives.

Re:Scum

[Belial6]

I also was a 'Navy Brat', and 100% of the many public schools that I attended fit the prior posters descriptions. To be fair, I would add biological space heaters to the list of public school products. The OP did not claim that all students would be criminals or soldiers. Just that it is designed to produce a steady steam.

As for home schooling producing sociopath-leaning people... There are points that can be debated about home schooling, but the claim that it makes people sociopaths means that either you don't know what the word means, or you are just lying. Of the many hundreds of home schooled children that I have met, I don't think I have met a single one that I could legitimately be called a sociopath.

Re:Scum

[Zen_Sorcere]

I'm sorry you had a bad experience with the public schools. I still question the "designed to produce criminals and soldiers", though. Your milage may vary. *shrug*

"Sociopath: a person, as a psychopathic personality, whose behavior is antisocial and who lacks a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience."

Alright, I'll give you partial credit. I wasn't lying (but thanks for assuming that), but I did have an incomplete definition. The home schoolers I know are rather social people. But in my experience, they have lacked moral responsibility and social conscious, BIG TIME.

Re:Scum

[Belial6]

I don't know about the rest of the US, but at least in California, thy must also have the orange end.

Re:Scum

[insertwackynamehere]

I think that is everywhere. Furthermore in NYC painting a toy gun to look real is illegal as is painting a real gun to look like a toy. They tell us this through ads on the subway lol

Re:Scum

[Belial6]

I stand by my statement.

Re:Scum

[Zen_Sorcere]

AS do I. To each, their own. :)

Re:Scum

[LeoMaheo]

Except you are doing nothing to help people either identify or overcome their weaknesses before they are harmed.

I digress. I think s/he does, simply by rasing the question. Doing so gives *other* peoples ideas for actions. I do *not* think s/he needs to actually do anything him/herself in this issue (except for writing replies here at /.).

Also, there are other important things to spend your time on, in addition to reducing-ignorance. Perhaps s/he is spending his/her time doing something *you* would consider a lot more meaningful than preventing-people-from-being-scam-victims-by-ignorance? There are genocides and war and other things you could try to put an end to, and you don't have all time in the world.

In the unlikely event that you are already doing something to actually proactively help people, I offer a preemptive apology.

I think s/he (i.e. causality (777677)) *does* do something, by writing what s/he has written. --- I got some ideas to attempt to help people becoming less ignorant, by reading his/her texts.

(May I ask, Anonymous Coward, are you a scam victim, or is e.g. your spouse a scam victim? You seem otherwise unreasonably upset, from my current point of view.)

Re:Scum

[causality]

Henry David Thoreau once said that there are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil for every one striking at the root.

The scammers themselves are the branches. They are a dime a dozen. Catch one, three more will take his place. This will always be the case so long as there is so potential for ill-gotten profit. I'd rather deal with this problem by reducing the potential for ill-gotten profit. That's the root of this particular evil.

It's just a fact that the more knowledgable, savvy, and wise you are, the less likely it is that you will be successfully targeted by this scam or any other. I do not believe wisdom is something one should keep away from others and hoard like so much silver and gold. So for anyone who will listen, I say that you need not be anyone's victim.

As you have noticed, using stories of vulnerable ignorance as examples of what not to do is in fact a way to help people identify and overcome a weakness before they learn the hard way.

Also, the AC is likely not a scam victim or an immediate relative of a scam victim. I have encountered this time and time again and expected to encounter it this time. If your reject the victim mentality and instead adopt a model of taking full responsibility for one's actions, including accepting when you have mistakenly trusted someone you should not have trusted, you will catch all sorts of flak for this. Most of it will be filled with negative emotion and either poorly reasoned or completely irrational.

The victim mentality is precious and very dear to those who hold it. It absolves them of all blame so they have an excuse for never facing their own character flaws, weaknesses, and other shortcomings. It's always those $EVIL_PEOPLE who cause all of their problems. It doesn't really absolve them of anything, of course, for I have never known a person like this who had any real joy. The pain of facing their own flaws is merely replaced with the pain of being a leaf in the wind, forever at the mercy of external events. Frankly it's beneath them, but they don't see it that way.

It takes a significant amount of courage to be honest about your shortcomings. Sometimes this means seeing with extreme clarity how much of a fool you can be. Your ability to do this is inversely proportional to the size of your ego. If you have a big ego, it needs to be fed with the assurance that you're really alright, a need that wouldn't be there if this were true.

So for many, my rejection of the victim mentality is a painful message. I am doing them no harm, but because it reminds them of what they'd rather deny, they assume that I am the cause of that pain. Now there is a need to rationalize their vitriol towards it, and for them any rationalization will do, however flimsy.

It does not improve matters in the least that many manipulative people will support this false concept of the self because victims are needy and manipulative people need to be needed. Independence is an enemy to them and not something they will ever encourage. Much of modern politics works this way. When people are taken advantage of in this fashion, they now have two barriers to waking up and being honest with themselves: the pain of facing their flaws plus the pain of realizing they were taken advantage of. These are significant barriers to those who are already lacking the courage to conduct honest introspection. I'll also add that negativity of any sort is always a self-feeding cycle.

I think s/he (i.e. causality (777677)) *does* do something, by writing what s/he has written. --- I got some ideas to attempt to help people becoming less ignorant, by reading his/her texts.

That's because you were willing to see those ideas. I can plainly see something that speaks highly of you: you don't need me for those ideas -- at best I only saved you some time. While I would strongly discourage anyone from depending on me, this on the other hand is a service I am glad to rende

DAMN YOU, MICROSOFT!

[Anonymous Coward]

Change your logo immediately!

Can't Do Much

[causality]

Meanwhile, an assortment of British regulators have said there is nothing they can do to stop it.

Well, yeah. You can't fix stupid. You can't fix gullible.

"A fool and his money are soon parted."

This does provide yet another argument against the camp which thinks that understanding the tools they use is not important.

Re:Can't Do Much

[Monkeedude1212]

Perhaps they could get the people who have been scammed to report the telephone number and work with the teleco's to find out where the scammers are hiding?

This worked in my city when Scammers would steal wallets and purses and then call later claiming to be the police, and to meet them in "unmarked white police vans".

It's true, you can't fix stupid - but the smarter ones can... you know... at least provide useful information aiding in the capture.

Re:Can't Do Much

[countertrolling]

This does provide yet another argument against the camp which thinks that understanding the tools they use is not important.

The message I get from all this is that computers really aren't ready for prime time. They're more like automobiles from the first decade of the 1900s.

Re:Can't Do Much

[Anonymous Coward]

most scams originate outwith the UK so not alot can be done. Better to stop it via the credit card companies (however they may be processing transactions via multiple 3rd party merchant accounts which would be difficult to stop).

Re:Can't Do Much

[Anonymous Coward]

How so?

People still don't understand cars and if ANYTHING goes wrong with them, they don't know why.
Consider, also, that a computer's software is custom to each person as they add in more software packages and settings.
That's roughly akin to someone buying a car and having custom parts put on without knowing much of what they do. They still have no clue when something goes wrong.

How many people can do much more maintenance on their car than fixing a flat tire? That's not much different than someone knowing how to run an antivirus once in awhile, imo.

Just like the poster you're replying to was saying, it is important to understand the tools we use so we know how the things we use work.
If we don't understand that then we're just as much in the dark be in computer trouble or car trouble.

Re:Can't Do Much

[Richard_at_work]

So you think an automobile scam along similar lines today wouldn't work? Get the list of automobile type ownership from the licensing authority (most sell this information, or its easily available elsewhere), cold call the owner and inform them that a voluntary safety notice has been issued on their vehicle, would they like priority booking for just $99 over the phone...

Uninformed people are still uninformed, regardless of how long the technologies been around.

Re:Can't Do Much

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you implying that there are no dishonest garage-men who charge $700 for replacing a $35 part? And that there are no car enthusiasts who spend their free time tinkering?

Re:Can't Do Much

[Spatial]

A vague allusion and a car analogy. Yup, this will suffice to describe this complex phenomenon. What an insight.

Re:Can't Do Much

[Arancaytar]

You still have to get a license to drive one, so automobiles don't seem to be ready for prime time either. ;)

Re:Can't Do Much

[kaoshin]

The message I get from all this is that computers really aren't ready for prime time. They're more like automobiles from the first decade of the 1900s.

The message I get is that users really aren't ready for prime time. They're more like prehistoric monkeys.

Re:Can't Do Much

[Anonymous Coward]

This does provide yet another argument against the camp which thinks that understanding the tools they use is not important.

I disagree. You don't need to understand anything at all about the tool in question. All any potential victim of this scam needs to understand is the society they live in. In modern society, if someone calls you on the phone and says you "need" to give them money, it is very likely that they are, at the minimum, trying to sell you something you don't need. Any adult in this day and age should realize this.

Re:Can't Do Much

[xaxa]

Probably Skype (or something similar) as the article suggests.

The phone number is on the scam website: http://www.thenerdsupport.com/ (+44 20 3318 8706 if you feel like messing about with them, that's a normal landline so shouldn't cost much/anything to call from outside the UK).

Re:Can't Do Much

[MisterZimbu]

Hi.

I'm just calling to inform you that your car's warranty is expiring soon. Please call (800)555-1234 and we can renew your warranty for the low low price of $200.

Re:Can't Do Much

[lgw]

The "you warrentee has expired" robocalling scam of 2009 was one of the largest and most successful in recent times. This is certainly not a computer-specific problem.

Re:Can't Do Much

[countertrolling]

Actually I tend to agree... Lots of people (35,000 or so a year in the US?) are killing themselves and each other with the damn things. They do need to be fully automated. Operator error is the main problem, and it always will be. The airline industry is the best illustration of this I can dream up.

Re:Can't Do Much

[asdf7890]

Such scams are at least tried. I've had two calls to my house in the last year telling me that my car's warranty is due to expire and if I want to continue it I have to renew before the expiry date or it will cost more then twice as much to renew after that date. Would I like to renew now by card over the phone? I do not own a car and have never owned a car.

On both occasions I asked played concerned for a moment and asked "which of the cars?" at which point they hung up - obviously anyone asking any questions just makes them run as they don't have any real data other than name and phone number. Once you ask a questions about something they should know if they were who they hope the intended victim thinks they are their "cover" is blown, but they only need a few people who are not cynical/careful enough to check details in order for the operation to be profitable and said victim is no wiser until they try claim on the warranty by which time the scammers have long gone and covered their tracks.

Re:Can't Do Much

[countertrolling]

Yes, scamming is everywhere. I'm trying to point out that the computer is an appliance, and it should be as reliable and maintenance free as a stove or refrigerator. It has fewer moving parts, but they are built and programmed to such marginal tolerances that they barely function when brand new. It seems almost intentional to prop up the service industry.

Re:Can't Do Much

[iONiUM]

Actually they do this already. they call saying your car warantee is about to expire "on your vehicle", and you can extend it. Then, oddly, they ask for your car information, which should be a tip off right there.. but people go on and pay them. It's quite the effective scam.

Re:Can't Do Much

[Carrot007]

To reverse that it proves they are ready for the mainstream.

Once anything goes mainstream 99.9% of user do not know anything much about the product.

Examples. automobiles (at first they knew nothing, then they knew a lot, now again they know even less, remember you are talking about the majority of users here), tv, radio, electicity.

Hmm I wonder if that holds up for simple items.

More examples, pens, paper, calculators.

Well then yes, most people do not fully understand the tools they use. Prime Time use means they are cheap enough to not have to know because you can replacve them.

Re:Can't Do Much

[DrVxD]

Perhaps they could get the people who have been scammed to report the telephone number and work with the teleco's to find out where the scammers are hiding?

Nice idea in theory; in practice, these scammers:

• Know how to hide their number from caller ID
• Operate outside of the UK, so there's little (if anything) that the telco can do

Re:Can't Do Much

[Anonymous Coward]

It shows up as "International call". This is normal - when I get international calls from my family they have the same caller ID. (I believe British Telecom's policy is only to show caller ID when they're sure it's right. Since the US telephone system allows caller ID to be faked, they block it).

I've had a couple of calls from these jokers. Never got as far as them asking for money. The first time I played along, so they had me open up Event Viewer and notice the scary Errors recorded there. Then they told me to go to their website. I didn't know if they were going to try a 0-day browser exploit, so I hung up.

Re:Can't Do Much

[japonicus]

According to the website's domain registration, the contact details are: The Nerd Support +91.9680115111 Phone 280-A, Talwandi KOTA, Rajasthan 324005 India (see GoDaddy whois page, though those details may well be fake as well)

Re:Can't Do Much

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the main difference is that if a total stranger tells someone over the phone: "Maybe your car is out of fuel. Go over to where you insert your fuel nozzle, and look down in there to see if it's empty. If it's dark, light a match and drop it in there, in order to illuminate the interior or the tank," most car users won't obey the instructions. Most computer users will.

Re:Can't Do Much

[causality]

The "you warrentee has expired" robocalling scam of 2009 was one of the largest and most successful in recent times. This is certainly not a computer-specific problem.

I'm not an auto mechanic (far from it) and I have never worked in the automobile industry. Yet I immediately recognized that as a scam.

That only affirms my point that no one has to be a victim. Read my posts in this discussion and look at how much resistence that point has received. Yet here I am, in an area completely outside my expertise, receiveing an attempt to scam me, and immediately I realize that it is a scam. I never gave those bastards the time of day.

Would anyone like to continue making excuses for ignorance and stupidity?

Re:Can't Do Much

[mcgrew]

How so?

People still don't understand cars and if ANYTHING goes wrong with them, they don't know why.

Cars from that era were like Microsoft products; dangerous, expensive, needing constant maintenance, and not at all secure (twist the handle, jump in and drive). Today's cars last longer than MS's support; you can get parts for a car made fifty years ago. They require very little maintenance; an oil change or two every year, a tuneup every few, the occasional tire, etc.

Consider, also, that a computer's software is custom to each person as they add in more software packages and settings.
That's roughly akin to someone buying a car and having custom parts put on without knowing much of what they do.

People buy all sorts of custom add-ons for their cars and have them installed, and they know what the add-ons do, but not how they work, exactly like a software package. Most people have no clue how a word processor works, but they know what it does.

How many people can do much more maintenance on their car than fixing a flat tire? That's not much different than someone knowing how to run an antivirus once in awhile, imo.

The difference is, changing a flat fixes the problem, but antivirus simply doesn't work. If cars were like Microsoft products, you'd have "flat tire Tuesdays".

it is important to understand the tools we use so we know how the things we use work.

I know carpenters and construction workers; they have no clue how a power hammer works, they just know how to use it. If power hamers were like most software (not just Microsoft) you'd have a lot more construction workers missing fingers.

Re:Can't Do Much

[DrCode]

I'd hope that most of us have a general idea of what goes on in an automobile. We know that electricity is used to create sparks in the engine that explode gasoline, which was sprayed in by fuel injectors, and we know there's a coolant system with a water-pump and radiator. I don't do any work on my own car, but I'd know that I was being scammed if a repair shop said they needed to 'reverse the neutron flow'.:-)

OTOH, I really don't have clue what computer viruses and spy-ware do, even though I've been using computers for years and am a software engineer. But then, running Linux (and in the past, Unix), I've never had much need to find out.

Re:Can't Do Much

[sjames]

There's already a bunch of scams where they claim it's time to extend the factory warranty on your car. "Mysteriously" it doesn't come from an auto maker and mentions no affiliations with one. That and I got my car used and long out of warranty.

Warning! Sir Walter Raleigh has escaped his can

[Anonymous Coward]

...and your refrigerator is running down the street to catch him. For help, please punch the monkey.

P.S. Turn in your brain for a better model.

Unfortunately, it works.

[arhhook]

You can only do so much to save the end-user from themselves.

Re:Unfortunately, it works.

[Crudely_Indecent]

Oh, but so much more can be done.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. We need an Internet License.

Regulated much like drivers licenses, with different endorsements.

The Internet Endorsement: Allows a user to access the Internet when standardized testing shows competency. Users are only allowed to receive information.
The Email Endorsement: Allows a user to participate in email communication when standardized testing shows competency. Users can participate in two-way communication.
The Website Endorsement: Allows a user to author web content when standardized testing shows competency. Users are allowed to participate in forums, create websites or write articles.
The Server Endorsement: Allows a user to maintain a web server when standardized testing shows competency.

Each level of endorsement requires the previous endorsement. Maybe an etiquette endorsement in there somewhere.

Re:Unfortunately, it works.

[tivoKlr]

Maybe an etiquette endorsement in there somewhere.

Oh that etiquette endorsement has to be revoked prior to becoming eligible for the Server Endorsement. Etiquette towards end users? BAH!

Re:Unfortunately, it works.

[asdf7890]

Maybe an etiquette endorsement in there somewhere.

That should be rolled into both the email and website tests you mention. It should not be an "extra". Even having it as a pre-requisite for those two would not work as some of the nuances of etiquette are specific to each area and sometimes you need to know a little about the area to fully comprehend have bad doing things wrong could be for those who get hit by the results.

Re:Unfortunately, it works.

[Crudely_Indecent]

Every time I bring this idea up, it's modded troll!

My daughters weren't allowed to go on the internet until I was satisfied that they understood the dangers....

You can hop into a car and maybe do damage to a few other vehicles before your own car is damaged to the point that it can't be used to cause any more damage.

An uneducated user with internet is more dangerous (albeit, less deadly). Improper/unsafe internet use can cause damage almost indefinitely.

Wow

[Rik Sweeney]

How dumb do you have to be to fall for this one? The kind of people falling for these must be same ones who fall for the "suspicious activity in your bank account" scam.

Nothing to see here, move along.

Re:Wow

[IshmaelDS]

You would be surprised how many there are. I work as a network admin and I have dealt with some .... interesting?.... people. One emailed me to tell me their email wasn't working. Yes I know we have all read it in a comic but it's true. I had one of the CFO's I did some work for fill in and almost send a scam bank email form. He at the last second called me to see if I thought it was legit. sigh. I have had people call me up in a panic cause the system was "doing something illegal and they didn't want to get in trouble" (illegal exception errors). I could go on and on. This doesn't surprise me at all. A lot of people when it comes to anything to do with a computer are struck dumb immeditatly and stop using whatever intelligence they have.

Re:Wow

[Aeros]

I wonder if he was related to my old boss who called me up on my vacation to see if his name and number were on the contact page on the company website. To tough for him to actually look I guess.

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not just the gullible, but also that easily pressured that are at risk.

The editor of one of the local papers (The Maidenhead Advertiser, I think, I'm not sure which.) got one of these phone calls a few months ago and played along with it a bit to see where it went - I remember reading about this in the editorial. When he stopped playing along (at one point pointing out that his machine was a Linux machine, and didn't even run windows), the guy on the other end started becoming pretty aggressive.

Unfortunately, there's a lot of folk about that don't know much about computers, and more that cave quickly to pressure. The elderly in particular are pretty vulnerable to this sort of stunt.

There's an ongoing problem in semi-rural areas with cowboy builders using a similar ploy - this is just the same conjob updated for the digital age, and using the wonders of international jurisdiction to make themselves even less likely to get caught. I expect it's a lot less profitable, but much lower risk.

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

yep, I totally know what you mean here ... my aunt called me one time in *tears* ... she was on the verge of losing it ... because the computer 'said she had done something illegal'

ha ha ha

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

My favorite was a user who used to think the tech support email was the email for someone called "mailto". I never understood how he did not found funny that every single email he founds on a web page belongs to a guy called "mailto".

Re:Wow

[hkmwbz]

Look, not everyone is as up to date on the latest technology or scamming methods. I think it's quite silly to demand everyone to be as tech savvy as yourself. "But they shouldn't be scammed anyway," you might retort, to which I respond that it's human nature. People just don't have the capacity to think thoroughly about everything and inform themselves fully about every single thing they do.

Re:Wow

[Spad]

A lot of it is psychological; users convince themselves that computers are too complicated for them to understand, so they are.

We had an app at work that ran on a Windows CE-based palmtop that nurses used to record patient notes on their visits and then synced back to a server when they got back to base. The users never had any problems with this at all. Then, when the palmtops were up for replacement, they swapped them out for notebooks running XP with exactly the same app (newer version, same UI) and sync process and suddenly none of the users were able to cope any more.

Despite the fact that the processes were identical, they saw the notebooks as "proper" computers as opposed to the palmtops that were just electronic notepads in their minds and they convinced themselves that as a proper computer it was too complex for them to understand. So much of the trouble with technology is users creating barriers in their own minds and it's largely of "our" own making for trying to convince users throughout the 90s that computers were easy to use and would do everything for them, when we all know that isn't true.

Re:Wow

[Amouth]

i have 2 resident people who e-mail me constantly to tell me the e-mail is down.. (they send it from gmail)

in reality? they didn't bother connecting the VPN - instead they just closed the popup asking for their password..

i hear from one of them at least every 2 weeks..

Re:Wow

[nine-times]

One emailed me to tell me their email wasn't working. Yes I know we have all read it in a comic but it's true.

I believe you. I actually had one of those. Someone emailed me, saying, "My email is not working." I replied saying something like, "Seems to be working. Is it only when you send email to specific people?"

I got an email back saying something like, "Nope. Still not working. I cannot send or receive email at all, with anyone. I think the mail server is down."

Sometimes you just hope your being trolled, since the alternative is too sad.

Re:Wow

[tibit]

I'm out of mod points, but the above is very insightful. I can relate seeing, on many occasions, where a dead simple UI, no more complex than say that of an ATM, becomes utterly confounding just because it's being presented with a PC in sight. In one case: as long as the PC was hidden, and the UI was accessed via a touchscreen --- everything was fine. As soon as mouse, keyboard and the PC case became visible, people would say that "something broke" and that I should bring it back to the "way it was before". This was a big eye opener when it comes to usability: users are not rational. Not at all.

Re:Wow

[blair1q]

How dumb do you have to be to be beaten to a pulp and have your emptied wallet thrown down onto your face?

A crime is a crime.

Re:Wow

[IshmaelDS]

Probably. I think they all have a common ancestor along the way. Like the guy I did some consulting for that insisted on the best computer in the office and then never turned it on. His secratary used to print out his e-mail and leave it on his desk because he didn't know how to check it and refused to be taught.

Re:Wow

[eihab]

You would be surprised how many there are. I work as a network admin and I have dealt with some .... interesting?.... people.

I worked for a web hosting company before where one of our clients was having supposed issues with their mailing list, they said some users were not receiving messages sent to the list.

I checked out the mailing list code (it was an in-house solution) and then looked through the mail servers' log files and found nothing in there that supports their claims. So, I decided to email the mailing list to get to the bottom of this. I introduced myself and asked everyone to reply to me if they received the message because we're "debugging" this issue.

I think out of a couple of hundred users only a handful actually followed the instructions and responded directly to me. The rest of them decided to use the magical "reply-all" button and caused havoc.

One fun user (with an @aol.com email address nevertheless) took the cake on this one though. S/He kept replying-all to "each and every reply" that was sent by other members. The emails were one-liners like:

- It's working, I got the email.
- I got this message.
- Got another one!
- I got this one too!
- I'm getting the message!

S/He sent close to 50 emails that day. It was hilarious and somehow sad at the same time. I lost faith in humanity that day.

Re:Wow

[DrugCheese]

Look, not everyone is as up to date on the latest technology or scamming methods.

You don't have to be, the technology has nothing to do with the scam. Once money comes up as an issue all you have to do is be smart enough not to give it away.

Re:Wow

[Chris Mattern]

I think it's quite silly to demand everyone to be as tech savvy as yourself.

"Never trust, and, in fact, never deal at all, with people who cold-call you" isn't "tech savvy", it's goddamn common sense.

Re:Wow

[DavidTC]

It's the big secret of people who are 'knowledgeable' about computer.

50% of the time when 'help' someone do something, like send email...we don't know anything any more than they do. we're just reading the damn screen and doing what the logical thing would be, and we're not scared of doing the wrong thing. I mean, people ask me to help them send an attachment using a webmail system I'd never seen before:
Why don't you click on the 'Attach file' link there and select the file? Okay, where'd you save the file? Okay, select it, and then type something in the body, and press send. There you go. Yes, that's me, a computer genius, reading the screen like that and having the ability to use common dialog boxes.(1)

And another 25% of the time we're solving problems by applying basic computer knowledge. Like, very basic. Like 'able to learn in 10 hours' basic. Stuff like 'The World Wide Web works by your computer talking to another computer through even more computers.' and 'Video files tend to about 10 times as big as mp3s per minute.' and 'Wireless signals are often encrypted'.

And another 20% of the time it's stuff we've either run into before, and thus know what to do, or we fricking google it. Lacking the basic computer knowledge above just turns that 25% into this also. (I'm often like this on a Mac.)

There is almost no 'skill' involved at all. Half of it is just a willingness to say 'Okay, this looks right, let's try that'.

Only about 5% of the stuff people who are 'knowledgeable' about computers do for others as 'tech support', mainly stuff like buying/building computers, and programming, and other 'creative' stuff where you aren't fixing something that's broken, actually require any skill.

I mean, I have a younger brother who doesn't have any formal computer training outside of high school and an Office class for his associate degree. He's an auto mechanic.

But he grew up with a nerd and a half-nerd, so he knows how to operate his computer, and any questions from him are things like 'Should I go with AGP or should I pay more for PCI-E?' and 'This game is giving some sort of Direct X error on startup, and all I can find are suggestions to reinstall it and Direct X...which I've done. Ideas?'. This is because he learned 'the secret' to solve computer problems: Do the obvious thing, and if you don't know what that is, google what's wrong. And backup your computer so if it blows up, you can just reinstall.

1) Yes, yes, we've all fallen prey to the stupid inability to see things right in front of us, and someone else points it out instantly, but I'm not talking about that here.

Re:Wow

[Hatta]

A lot of it is psychological; users convince themselves that computers are too complicated for them to understand, so they are.

Where does this perception come from? Nothing is too complicated to understand if you work at it. I think people are just lazy and don't want to work at understanding the world around them.

Re:Wow

[Pentium100]

What I don't understand is why people lock their doors, have car alarms, why banks keep money in safes, also why a lot of people want to have a gun for protection. Do they live in countries where theft, robbery and murder are not crimes?

(for those who do not understand sarcasm - the fact that something is a crime does not mean that it will never happen, so you should be able to protect yourself and not just rely on the law and hope that cops arrive soon enough. This also applies to scams.)

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

if only someone were to invent some sort of ipad... nah, that would never catch on

Re:Wow

[Ben4jammin]

Yes so the "way it was before" was simply a construct in their mind...how do you reproduce THAT? But I agree that users are not rational. They expect to have problems, so they do. What I find interesting is that often this happens on a subconscious level and they don't realize it. How many times have you been told "it doesn't work" only to see it work perfectly when you watch them do it? They do not realize that they are doing something differently with you watching as opposed to when they do it without you watching. Fascinating stuff

Re:Wow

[blair1q]

Protecting yourself includes hiring police, prosecutors, and judges to enforce the laws.

This has the effect of discouraging most crime.

Claiming there's no problem just because the victims of a con were conned is not rational behavior.

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

How dumb do you have to be to fall for this one? The kind of people falling for these must be same ones who fall for the "suspicious activity in your bank account" scam.

Nothing to see here, move along.

How stupid are people?

I offer this

http://www.barackobama.com

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

people are not rational. Not at all.

Fixed that for you.

And I know what someone here will say - "Well I'm a nerd and nerds are very rational." But, seriously, I cannot name one individual who does not have an irrational reaction to something. Some people are worse than others, but the general assumption is that EVERYBODY is irrational.

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

How dumb do you have to be to fall for this one? The kind of people falling for these must be same ones who fall for the "suspicious activity in your bank account" scam.

Nothing to see here, move along.

To be fair, I got one of these calls a couple of months back, played around with the caller, tried to get information out of him and passed the details on to Trading Standards, Which? Magazine and BBC Watchdog.

May not seem like a major deal to you and I (I mean, hell, opening a call with "we have noticed a lot of traffic on your internet connection" (which was a worry, granted), I asked who he was calling from "we're from the Windows"... Yeah), the first thing I did was to call my Grandma to warn her to never believe any of that. Let's be honest, my Grandma can use email and that's about it, and will most likely believe someone that throws enough buzzwords at her...

Re:Wow

[Dr Herbert West]

Suprised no one's modded you flamebait for mentioning the actual benefit of the iStuff line of products, but yeah-- that's exactly what the market for iStuff is. And it's a huge market-- most people want a computer that's as intuitive and easy to use as a toaster. Which is why the iPoo is more like a toaster (or a mall kiosk) than a robust, multifunctional, expandable computer.

It's not to my taste, of course, and I will never use one except for a dev platform.

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

(illegal exception errors)

That's an error on the part of the programmer. In the context of a user, 'illegal' means that something violates the laws of their country. The word 'illegal' should not be displayed to the user unless it has that meaning.

Re:Wow

[jrumney]

One emailed me to tell me their email wasn't working.

What is wrong with that, I've done the same myself? Surely as a sysadmin, you should know that the IMAP/POP3 server being down does not mean the SMTP server is also down.

Re:Wow

[Jaime2]

Confirmed here too. My variant is that people suddenly become unable to perform simple tasks in the presence of a computer. I had one guy (with 20 years experience in front of computers) call me because a Windows install wasn't going so well. He gave me the normal "it won't let me install it". I asked him to read me every word on the screen, after five minutes I gave up and told him I'd fix it when I was there tomorrow. When I got in, the screen had a message on it that read "No drives were found". It was the biggest sentence on the screen and had a warning icon next to it. I proceeded to fix the problem (hard drive power cable loose), but not before snapping a picture with my cell phone. I showed him the picture later and he said "That wasn't there when I looked at it".

Re:Wow

[Macrat]

doing what the logical thing would be

Just because you've been trained over the years to know what certain icons and terms mean, don't define them being "logical" to regular humans.

Re:Wow

[vidnet]

I think people are just lazy and don't want to work at understanding the world around them

There's a big difference between working at understanding the world around you, and learning to do professional level work in fields outside your own.

It's obvious to us that Microsoft wouldn't call you if you had a virus, and definitely wouldn't ask you to download software from third party sites. That upgrading the program in question usually fixes the problem. That cron has to be running from cronjobs to be performed. That a script has to be +r and not just +x. That 'inc eax' is slower than 'add eax,1' on a modern Intel CPU.

It's obvious to other people that you should use mold inhibiting paint in bathrooms. That a fuel pump that fits a car might work, but doesn't necessarily have the right fuel pressure. That drugs in screw-top containers should not be used intravenously. That large cacti can be covered with a blanket for safer transportation. I'd rather pay these people so that I can get by with my relatively basic understanding of paint, automotive repairs, medicine and transportation.

Commerce is the realization that no one can do everything well.

Re:Wow

[DavidTC]

When people use exactly the same term to describe what they want to do, yes, it does make it logical. Or at least, knowable.

If someone asks 'How do I change the color of text in Word 2007?' (That is the version is the one that introduced the dumb toolbars), I have no idea...but duh, looking at the screen, I select the toolbar tabs one after another until I see something that fucking says 'Color', and click it.

Same with my 'attachment' example. People know the term 'attachment' but they don't know how to look around the screen for something saying that. Like the computer is just going to magically read your mind and prompt you for it.

And if you don't know terms, that just puts that 50% into the 'type it into google' category. 'send file with hotmail'.

I have no idea what your experience is, but in my universe, there are only two types of computer users: The first group, when they can't figure something out, gives up, and the second group, when they can't figure something out, pokes around, or searches, until they do figure it out.

Being a member of the later group requires almost no skill or knowledge at all. Basically, people just need to know what 'programs' and 'documents' are and what common programs do what. A computer 101 class at some point, so anyone under 35 and anyone who's ever worked in an office. (And people who don't know that much are not the sort of people I've ever tried to solve problems for. They tend to not have computers at all.) This group can solve 95% of the problems they run into.

Sadly people are taught, and internalize, the idea that computers are easy to 'break'.

Re:Wow

[Terrasque]

A lot of it is psychological; users convince themselves that computers are too complicated for them to understand, so they are.

And THAT is, I think, the REAL genius behind Apple. It's not necessarily easier than other systems, but they make the user think it is.
When they try to use the machine with the attitude "this is simple, everyone says so, that's why I paid so much money for it. So even I should be able to use it" - and lo and behold, it is simple.

But, when the user thinks it is too complicated for them, it damn well will be. Error messages like "Low on battery power. You should connect the charger soon or the computer will shut off" could just as well be written in Swahili, and people will refuse to use any common sense at all.

I think the main difference between techies and other people is their initial attitude of "I should be able to figure this out" when encountering something new.

Duh

[kieran]

The only thing you need to stop this unstoppable scam is for people to be unwilling to shell out a significant sum of money to some c**t who calls them up out of the blue.

I mean, £185, when you didn't know there was anything wrong with your computer in the first place? You'd need to have more money than brains to shell out for that.

Re:Duh

[Anonymous Coward]

You'd need to have more money than brains to shell out for that.

Or unwavering trust in authority. Which is scarier?

Re:Duh

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean, £185, when you didn't know there was anything wrong with your computer in the first place?

In Windows there's always something wrong.

Re:Duh

[hibiki_r]

Ah, but by the time you make the download of the remote assistance code, are you sure their computer is in a good state? A guy calls you on the phone and, before asking for any money, manages to make you install a malware dropper. It's just a different vector than the warez/video codec downloaders that do the same thing, and install a fake anti-virus on your computer.

Re:Duh

[blueg3]

Part of the scam is that they get you to download the remote-control software before they tell you they'll charge you. At that point, they can hold your computer hostage.

Re:Duh

[r_jensen11]

I mean, £185, when you didn't know there was anything wrong with your computer in the first place? You'd need to have more money than brains to shell out for that.

The first thing that came across my mind is that £185 is probably more than the vast majority of the computers these people are using. I know it's certainly more than what my computers are worth. If somebody tried to charge me that much to fix my (5-year-old) computer, I'd say "No thanks" and buy a new computer.

Re:Duh

[jtownatpunk.net]

Well, I've been doing the more brains than money thing for quite a while and I'd like to try it the other way around just to see what all the hype is about. There are so many of those people out there I figure they must be on to something.

Re:Duh

[Richard_at_work]

The only thing you need to stop this unstoppable scam is for people to be unwilling to shell out a significant sum of money to some c**t who calls them up out of the blue.

I mean, £185, when you didn't know there was anything wrong with your computer in the first place? You'd need to have more money than brains to shell out for that.

Its no different to being told by a cold calling builder that your roof is sagging and needs several thousands of pounds of repairs done to make it safe. House owner coughs up, builder potters around in the attic for a day and legs it. One house owner that is a lot of money down for no reason other than fraud.

Unfortunately, these seem to be being reported in the news all too often today :(

Re:Duh

[asdf7890]

Or unwavering trust in authority. Which is scarier?

This isn't even just trusting authority though. This is trusting anyone who claims to have some authority which is even worse.

Re:Duh

[Carrot007]

You might, most people will not.

Most people do not comprehend the rapid devaluation of computers.

And as much as a 185 quid base unit may be 10 times beter than there current machine, it is bargain basement time, and most people will not buy the cheapest thing available.

And remember people get attacehd to the way they have set things up.

On a windows box at the first sign of anything not quite right I would do a fresh install. I regard this as no effort whatsoever and much better than even attempting to fix it as it cleans out all the enevitable crap that has been installed over time. To be honest I do this with any os I use. OS X, Linux, BSD. It's not that I cannot fix things, it's juts that it will take longert and the machine always benfits from a slimdown. The os is expendable and on it's own partition. My data is safe on other drives and partitions. In fact the only time I rescue machines and not reinstall is for other people. (Yes there is a limit to this! There are many situations I will not re-install but then again sometimes I will just for fun when nothing really is wrong because, you know, it is not effort).

Re:Duh

[asdf7890]

The worth of the data on the computer may be much higher than the computer itself, and by the time they talk about charging that have got the victim to download their software. They could easily have written that to lock an uneducated user out unless payment is received. Though in reality they are more likely not to do this (it would attract more legal attention as that is outright threatening behaviour) but instead to have included a keylogger in the software that will pick out the credit card details soon enough anyway.

Re:Duh

[mlts]

This is why I have a backup program that can do complete images to an external hard disk. If something odd happens and it can be traceable to an action after a specific point in time, I just save off any changed files I might have, throw in the recovery CD, restore to that PIT, then copy the changed files back. If I had the cash, I'd spring for a continuous backup program which can monitor some files and keep them synced almost in real time.

If it is an issue that is just odd and no real definite cause that I can pin a specific time on, I just copy all my files from my home directory to the data drive, unplug that, wipe the OS drive with dd, and reinstall cleanly, making sure to back up my EFS keys and deauthorize the machine in iTunes before the reinstall.

Keeping the OS and data on separate drives is a good idea, as well as keeping backups of both drives on a backup server (not a file share, a server that runs a utility which goes out and does remote backups) will save a lot of time and ripped out hair. If malware erased all drives, the data and OS drive would be toast, but the malware almost certainly wouldn't be able to jump past that to the stored media sets on the remote machine.

What I try to recommend to all users and tell them, "if not, why not?" (if they can afford it) is to buy an external drive and a backup program like TrueImage, Retrospect, or Time Machine. This, and also have a recovery CD that is put into a place they know where it is, and won't disappear like OS media tends to with novice computer users.

Re:Duh

[John Hasler]

> This isn't even just trusting authority though.

Yes it is.

> This is trusting anyone who claims to have some authority which is even
> worse.

Authority consists of nothing more than having your claims of authority believed. Cameron has more authority than these guys only in that more people believe his claims.

Re:Duh

[HopefulIntern]

This is why I rent. Should I ever buy a house I will either educate myself on all this stuff, or find someone who does know.

Re:Duh

[Anonymous Coward]

Can this software provide wireless power? Pull the plug, take it to a professional, get it cleaned. That'll cost a hell of a lot less.

Can't stop it?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Meanwhile, an assortment of British regulators have said there is nothing they can do to stop it"

Of course there is nothing they can do to stop it, most of these calls are going through BT phone systems and it's not like BT track and log every single call that they handle. So finding the range of numbers these people are using and blocking them would be impossible.... /s

Re:Can't stop it?

[Lunix Nutcase]

I believe what they meant by that comment is that there is nothing regulators can do to stop people for falling for social engineering scams. In what way do you presume them to be able to do so?

Re:Can't stop it?

[RightSaidFred99]

Wow, apparently fraud isn't illegal in the UK? You know, misrepresenting yourself and fraudulently claiming the person has a virus?

Re:Can't stop it?

[Lunix Nutcase]

Because making something illegal means that no one ever does that act, right? Secondly, making fraud illegal is just something to prevent people from trying to commit these con jobs. It has absolutely no bearing on the fact that people will still fall for them.

Re:Can't stop it?

[Anne Thwacks]

If fraud was illegal here, then most of the "regulators" would be the first to be arrested. They can never do anything about real problems, but they draw fat salaries and make facile comments on the media. One regulator appeared in the media and actually said (about a different phone based scam) "We cant catch them - they are criminals and they run away when we come after them!"

Its a symptom of a more serious problem: The legal system is too expensive for ordinary people - you cant sue people who wrong you cos it costs too much, so a "regulator" post is created to do it for you - but they cant do anything because they are too useless. Its social melt-down.

Re:Can't stop it?

[asdf7890]

Even if they were all traced, you would need to chase, capture and prosecute them. Even if the regulators had the power, from where would they get the funds? And even if they caught all the current crop, more would turn up next day. You can't fix this completely as the fraudsters end, the only sure fire way to get rid of the problem is to educate the potential victims. Unfortunately this is ny on impossible too.

Re:Can't stop it?

[Anonymous Coward]

shoot all the stupid people and turn them into animal feed?

Re:Can't stop it?

[Anonymous Coward]

discontinue their telephone service for starters.

My (non-techie) dad got a call from these people

[Anonymous Coward]

He rang me to relate an annoying but amusing call where someone with an unintelligible accent had been excitedly telling him that something must be done about his PC because it was sending out "the signals!"

He asked for a number to call them back on, then called me. I googled the number: obvious scam, lots of people reporting it.

I hate this sort of swindle

[thewils]

It's like the one where some dubious company persuades you to install some new version of their operating system claiming that it's super fast and totally secure, etc. etc. and then after six months your machine crawls to a halt unless you give them more money for the next version which is faster, more secure, etc. etc.

Oh wait...

Re:I hate this sort of swindle

[Kjella]

and then after six months your machine crawls to a halt unless you give them more money for the next version

Six months? Well, that eliminates Windows at least. And OSX 10.3-6 have been on a two year cycle. The only OS I know that releases every six months as clockwork is Ubuntu, but I think you're doing it wrong...

Re:I hate this sort of swindle

[drooling-dog]

Doesn't always work, though... The GF gets around that scam by sticking with 90s vintage software no matter what. Suggested switching to Linux, but there must be something wrong with it because it's not advertised much and she thinks I and my friends are the only ones in the world who know about it. She might be more comfortable with Windows 7, but between that and the updated software she'd need (Office, Photoshop, etc.) she's looking at four-figure dollarage. And, of course, that wouldn't feel any more "familiar" than Linux/Gnome/OpenOffice/GIMP at this point...

Re:I hate this sort of swindle

[Anonymous Coward]

Except the difference is that Vista and Windows 7 were faster and more secure than their predecessor.

Re:I hate this sort of swindle

[Anonymous Coward]

I LOLed at that - well done!

ps my CAPTCHA was 'mutiny'...

Re:I hate this sort of swindle

[Anonymous Coward]

It's usually considered bad form to date someone with that many extra chromosomes. No matter how much you love her, it really looks like you're taking advantage.

Captcha: rejector

And ...

[Spiked_Three]

What is the difference between this and the tech support offered by most companies?

Re:And ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Real tech support quality may often be poor but:
- Customers call in to them, not the other way around
- They only call out as call backs to customers
- The customer has a legitimate problem (at least in the customer's viewpoint though their system may be working as intended)
- Software level service fees are not nearly as expensive as these charges are. The price of that charge is a full service agreement for at least a year (based on what extra support they might entail, durations beyond that varry). The price listed appears to be for a _single service_.

Re:And ...

[jpyeck]

You actually get to talk to a person on the phone?

Re:And ...

[Jedi Alec]

- They only call out as call backs to customers

Note that this isn't *entirely* true ;-)

I used to often work evenings and folks would call and complain that their cable connection(and thus internet as well) would be out. Policy was that for a singular problem we'd drop by within 2 working days but in the case of an outage where multiple homes were affected we'd drag some poor mechanic from behind his 'taters and be on site within 2 hours.

Obviously every customer would loudly proclaim that the entire street was having issues, so at one point I devised a devious plot consisting of calling 1 or 2 random neighbours to inquire about the state of their cable signal :)

Re:And ...

[mlts]

You at least are able to understand the scammers, who pose what they want in intelligible communications without hanging up or transferring you to another department?

All your money are belong to us

[xjlm]

This just reinforces my views about open-source. No money in that for McAfee or Micro$oft, though...

Re:All your money are belong to us

[Nadaka]

This isn't really a problem that open source software would solve.

You would still have users out there that can fail for these old fashioned confidence scams.

Re:All your money are belong to us

[Lunix Nutcase]

How exactly does open source prevent social engineering scams?

Re:All your money are belong to us

[nj_peeps]

Sacamer: Hi this is M$, we have detected a virus on your PC.
Callie: Really? What version of winblows am I using right now?
Scamer: Windows XP.
Callie: Try again there buddy, I use Linux. (click)

Re:All your money are belong to us

[causality]

How exactly does open source prevent social engineering scams?

Open Source is often accused of not being "user-friendly" because it caters to savvy users who know what they're doing. At the very least, it assumes that the user wishes to understand even if they do not have that understanding now. It is not sold to anyone based on how "easy to use" it is or how little expertise is required to use it. It is not sold as a substitute for knowing what you're doing as many Windows apps are.

So perhaps Open Source in the strictest isolation doesn't prevent social engineering. I think it's the culture surrounding it. Open Source is all about being able to examine and modify the program yourself, if you are so inclined. That naturally assumes that you would have or could obtain some programming skill and some understanding about what the program is intended to do. This again is not "so easy any moron could use it" and isn't trying to be.

It follows that more savvy and knowledgable users are less likely to fall for social engineering attempts. Ignorance is the social engineers' very best friend.

Re:All your money are belong to us

[Disgruntled Goats]

To counter with an example from the real world just look at the malware infections of people installing screensavers for ubuntu. Where was the magic open source pixie dust to stop them. Oh yeah it doesn't exist.

Re:All your money are belong to us

[Lunix Nutcase]

That has nothing to do with Linux being open source or not. Linux could be closed source and a windows virus or malware won't run on it.

Re:All your money are belong to us

[ais523]

There are, in fact, several organisations that charge ridiculously high amounts of money for (legitimate) copies of OpenOffice.org, in the hope of suckering people into buying it from them rather than just downloading it for free. (Of course, it's legal to charge for GPL software (so long as you obey the other conditions), and it's even sometimes worth buying if you get extra benefits, like a warranty or support, with it. But the scammers don't offer anything you wouldn't get with a simple free download.) Also completely legal, also rather morally dubious.

Re:All your money are belong to us

[Lunix Nutcase]

It follows that more savvy and knowledgable users are less likely to fall for social engineering attempts. Ignorance is the social engineers' very best friend.

So then where was that savvy and knowledge when people were installing malware ridden screensavers on their Ubuntu boxes? Or where were all those eyes on the source when UnrealIRCD had a trojan put into the Linux version without anyone knowing for a year? You can crow all you want about only Windows users falling for this and all about how open source leads to this not happening but there are counterexamples to show this just isn't true.

Re:All your money are belong to us

[TangoMargarine]

Ooh, two whole examples? Well obviously our entire argument is completely invalid now. How many Windows infections appear in a given month?

Re:All your money are belong to us

[insertwackynamehere]

That's because so many Linux users have it ingrained in their head that Linux cannot get viruses and that it is inherently more secure that they don't take precaution and assume "well it's open source I'm sure someone else has audited it".

*nix and BSD systems may have an inherently more secure user system (at least from what I understand which is not much and maybe changed with Windows' newer OSes) but that doesn't mean sudoing an executable is fine and dandy.

Re:All your money are belong to us

[Pentium100]

Which is more profitable for the malware writers:

1) Windows, ~90% market share and a lot of clueless users
or
2) Linux, 3% market share, incompatibilities between distributions, 90% of users know what they are doing?

Re:All your money are belong to us

[causality]

So then where was that savvy and knowledge when people were installing malware ridden screensavers on their Ubuntu boxes?

The user TangoMargarine beat me to a complete rebuttal of what you said there. Instead I'll address this one point specifically:

Ubuntu is touted as the "easy to use" Linux distro, as in you don't need to know what you are doing to use it. And that's the one where this screensaver malware appeared. If anything that only affirms my original point.

One other thing:

You can crow all you want about only Windows users falling for this

Actually, yes I can, thank you very much. The scammers are saying that Microsoft found a virus on your computer. That does a rather good job of limiting this to Windows users, wouldn't you say?

I would pit the knowledge, technical skill, and ability to recognize an online scam of the average Linux user against those traits of the average Windows user. Any day.

Re:All your money are belong to us

[arth1]

So then where was that savvy and knowledge when people were installing malware ridden screensavers on their Ubuntu boxes?

C'mon, now. Everybody knows that Mark Shuttleworth isn't a real Scotsman.
Or, to put it another way, Ubuntu is to Open Source what McDonalds is to restaurants; arguably part of it, and the most popular too, but you wouldn't recommend taking your love or business partners to either.

Re:All your money are belong to us

[the_womble]

One screen saver, available for download on one site, and was never in the repos, is of course, as great a danger as the tens of thousands of security threats Windows users face.

Creative energy

[osullish]

Its funny how much creativity goes into these scams - they're more elaborate than any morally acceptable way of making money! I'm sure that creative energy could be used in a more positive way. However its probably the case that these scams feel easier than positive work.

Re:Creative energy

[aicrules]

the problem with morally acceptable of making money is that they often morally tie you to the person paying you in some way. And therefor to keep morally on the up and up, you continue to have to make morally right decisions and actions. Scams, however, it's just a matter of how far you can string a person before you move on to the next one. And you seldom have to worry about silly things like reporting taxes and employing people, though some scams do get that large that they employee people who unwittingly (sure, right) participate. Still easier than providing a useful service that works to make customers happy.

Re:Creative energy

[kenrblan]

Generating $280US or £185 in a matter of minutes without much technical skill is a pretty good payout. Not many jobs pay that well outside of the CEO class. These guys could easily be making $8000/day. At that rate they could make over $2Milllion in US dollars in a year just treating it like an 8 hour per day, 5 days per week job. I have to put more creativity and effort into my job and don't get anywhere near that kind of payback.

Re:Creative energy

[hedwards]

What scares me is that this doesn't look any less legitimate than a lot of the corporate policies out there. Charging people for tech support on a product you've already charged them for. Rearranging the order in which checks are cleared to maximize the number of them that bounce. Using unclear language in insurance documents hoping to not have to pay out the promised sums of money.

Re:Creative energy

[PRMan]

But then they go to prison and make nothing for the next 5-10 years.

Re:Creative energy

[cshay]

Crime is easier because there is less competition - fewer qualified people willing to do the same thing.

Re:Creative energy

[at_slashdot]

Maybe it's because they don't need to pass the HR hurdle...

Re:Creative energy

[Anonymous Coward]

No they don't.

Re:Creative energy

[DavidTC]

Charging people for tech support on a product you've already charged them for.

No shit

In my universe, if I've paid for a product, I've paid for, at the very least, installation tech support. Maybe not free support about each and every feature of the product, if I'm trying to set up some weird margins in Word that don't seem to be operating exactly like the help says, I don't get to call support for free, I get that.

But, I've sure as fuck paid for it to actually get to the point where it is installed, and runs, and appears to open and save files, etc.

It's called damn 'fitness for purpose'. Either the software does the very basic of what people expect software to do (And people expect software to, ya know, 'run'.), the seller makes it do that, or the seller gives me my damn money back.

Symantec's just one of the many companies that's started charging for installation support recently, really pissing me off. Although, to be fair to them, 90% of the time, when their stuff doesn't install, it's because there's a virus stopping it...but all that means is that there either should be some changing domain (Viruses block Symantec's sites), changing code (So viruses can't stop it.) program people can download to remove all the damn viruses before they install, or Symantec should just be upfront and state they don't support using their software on already infected systems, and refund the purchase price if the software won't install.

Re:Creative energy

[Anonymous Coward]

Hypothetically speaking, that would mean the theoretical 2 million dollars comes out to be 200,000 a year for 10 years, 400,000 a year for 5 years will just sit in a bank until the scammer gets out, with all the interest that's a pretty good chunk of change for retirement. Better than any 401k plan I've seen.

Re:Creative energy

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, if they couldn't land a job in the first place then that might be acceptable risk.

Jonathan James

[JayTech]

Is that you?

Same here in the states

[gregthebunny]

I get calls once or twice per month that start out like this. I usually just yell "NOOOOO" like I'm dying into the phone and promptly hang up. It's good for a chuckle.

But seriously, warn all your normie friends about this. My parents were surprised such a thing would be a scam, and my mom's sister even got popped for $90 by these people. Of course, after I told her about it and she tried to call them back, the number was "no longer in service".

Education about the scam is the only way to avoid it.

Re:Same here in the states

[ledow]

Education about SCAMS is the only way to avoid it. Otherwise the next scam that's slightly different in nature has you falling for it too.

Companies do not contact you for things like this. Banks do not phone you up and, if they do, you say "Fine, I'll contact customer services in my own good time and resolve the issue" - that way *YOU* phone the bank and thus are sure that it is the bank that you have phoned, and that there is a REAL outstanding problem.

How did Microsoft get the phone number? How dare they demand access to my private machine? If it's "required" then they can damn well come to my door, at their expense, and fix it themselves on my kitchen table while I supervise. You do *NOT* get Toyota phoning up, even if your car is part of a recall, without other things following it that WILL verify the authenticity. Letters. You contacting them and verifying they ARE Toyota, etc.

The magic word is "payment" too. Demand money for something and you better send me an itemised bill. Don't have my address? Oh, shame, seeing as you managed to "discover" my phone number. If I had any business dealings with you, you'd certainly have my address on record and/or would be able to subpoena it if necessary.

My bank don't send me emails asking for my PIN. In fact, they don't send me emails. If I choose to ignore said emails, eventually a letter from them will land on my doorstep if it's *really* important and I can contact customer services myself, or send a recorded delivery letter to their head office. If they ask what took me so long, I tell them that I don't reply to suspected scams and they should know not to contact me that way as per the bank's OWN advice on dealing with scams.

Similarly, my phone company don't ring me about renewing my contract with them. If they do, they will get ignored. If you want to renew a *contract* then I'm going to need to sign something, so send it to me in the post, goodbye. If the person on the end of the phone claiming to be from my phone company doesn't ALREADY have my name, address, the package I'm on, how much I'm paying, the COMPANY they are supposed to be calling from (I had a scammer once demand that he was from "your phone company" and then he couldn't name which company that was even after four guesses), my payment details and everything else they need to know, then they are NOT from my phone company. My car insurance company don't NEED to ask for my details and/or my renewal date. They would already know it. They don't need to phone me up to renew it, they'll send me a letter a few weeks beforehand.

The guy who knocked on my door claiming to be from my electricity company (and holding a device that he "just needed to put on the meter" and a contract that I "just needed to sign") doesn't *need* access to my property without prior agreement, unless he has some sort of police officer with him (and that I would verify even more heavily - the PC who *doesn't* wait outside while you phone the station to verify his identity is the one to shut the door on and call 999 / 911 / 112).

The electricity guy also doesn't *need* to touch anything in my house. Hell, he doesn't *need* to enter my property at all and if he tries, he'll find himself flat on his back. Even a bailiff can't force his way into my property - unless I've invited him in (under UK law, at least) or unless he has a court-officiated warrant and even then he'll have a police officer supervising him. Hell, my LANDLORD can't legally enter my property if I don't give him permission too, without the same sort of backup/documentation, and technically he owns the property. (BTW: Electricity guy turned out to be from a rival electricity firm that *didn't* know who I was with, and was trying to "switch" me to their company - Please everybody avoid EDF Energy. The guy was lucky not to have me reporting him for fraud and numerous other offences.)

Stop being idiots and combating each scam as it comes up. I saw people in IT recommending to "never open any attachment

Re:Same here in the states

[blennidae]

If you have never heard of Tom Mabe and his response to telemarketers, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkdoogjic4I

Re:Same here in the states

[DrugCheese]

But seriously, warn all your normie friends about this.

Don't give money over the phone, ever.

It's that simple. If it's not your electric company, your ISP, your gas company, water company, etc...

DON'T GIVE MONEY OVER THE PHONE. It's not that hard of a concept to teach. If any of my friends, technologically savvy or not, fell for this I'd laugh while feeling sorry for them. Sorry for their lack of common sense.

Re:Same here in the states

[grumbel]

Education about SCAMS is the only way to avoid it.

The only way to avoid it is putting the scammers behind bars. If you try to educate people the scammers will simply come up with a more elaborate scam. And no, putting them behind bars isn't hard, most of the time there is a clear money trail to follow, quite often the scammers identity is even completly known.

How did Microsoft get the phone number?

Your ISP will have your phone number and maybe he will have a DPI running on your internet connection to scan for the latest worms and maybe he has some cooperation deal with Microsoft for the cleanup. Real? No. Completely plausible in theory, absolutely.

Re:Same here in the states

[VGPowerlord]

How did Microsoft get the phone number?

Your ISP will have your phone number and maybe he will have a DPI running on your internet connection to scan for the latest worms and maybe he has some cooperation deal with Microsoft for the cleanup. Real? No. Completely plausible in theory, absolutely.

Wouldn't an ISP be the one to deal with this, and their typical response would be to cut off your Internet service and force you to call them?

Re:Same here in the states

[DavidTC]

You do *NOT* get Toyota phoning up, even if your car is part of a recall, without other things following it that WILL verify the authenticity. Letters. You contacting them and verifying they ARE Toyota, etc.

Perhaps more importantly, if Toyota calls you up about a recall, they tell you to go to the Toyota dealer to have your car fixed. You don't pay them for anything over the phone. (And hopefully don't pay anything there, either.) If it's a 'scam', it's a spectacularly useless one. You really only need to turn on your BS detector if they want something from you, and don't need to worry that people are inexplicably calling you up to just make you waste gas driving to the dealer, which has no idea what's going on.

But, yes. It's a basic rule to, under no circumstances, give any money to people who called you. I just find the concept of doing that incomprehensible.

I mean, forget 'scams'. Even 'legit' things where people call up and identify themselves, and try to sell you something, are stupid to do over the phone.

You don't do business with unknown people for good or services you can't immediately see! You want to buy something remotely, you find a reputable company and contact them. The only stuff you should buy from 'strangers' is stuff you can inspect beforehand.

And even then I still wouldn't buy from someone who contacted me, as that's how 90% of RL conmen work. (And by 'contacted me', read 'happened to have something I wanted and they needed cash desperately so I, who was standing nearby, offered to buy it cheaply from them', because that's how the conmen do it. Beware 'lucky breaks'. But anyway.)

Re:Same here in the states

[arth1]

Education about SCAMS is the only way to avoid it.

No, common sense and healthy skepticism works too. Even better, I think, because it works even for scams that haven't appeared yet, and for which there is no education.

There's one born every minute, and a fool and his money will soon be parted. The question is just who takes his money. The scammer, big corporations, goverments, or ... the "educator"?

Re:Same here in the states

[Pentium100]

The only way to avoid it is putting the scammers behind bars.

Not really, and here's why:

1. The justice system is not perfect, so there will always be some criminals who manage to get away from the law.
2. Somebody will try to commit the crime thinking that they will also manage to get away.
3. Even if all scammers were arrested, they probably do not keep records indicating who was scammed for how much, so not all victims will get their money back.

Putting scammers behind bars would only prevent those scammers from scamming for the amount of thime they were sentenced to serve (and maybe not even them, if they manage to obtain a cell phone while in prison).

The same as putting murderers behind bars does not eliminate murder - yes, those who are behind bars will most likely be not able to murder more people until they are released, but others still can.

Re:Same here in the states

[grumbel]

The problem in this case isn't that the criminals get away from the law, it is that there is no law to match the case and thus the scammers aren't even criminals. It is a legal loophole that needs to be plugged. Also the comparison with murderers doesn't fit, murder is for most part not a business model, scamming people on the other side is, often a quite successful one with no punishment even when you get caught. We had brilliant judgments over here in Germany where the scammer had to pay back the money he collected, but only to those that actually sued him, all the rest of the money he could keep and walk away free.

Re:Same here in the states

[Terrasque]

Amateur. What you'd want to do is play The Retarded Computer Idiot for him. If you ever did real tech support, you'd know this guy.

Here are some of the tricks:
  * When asked to right click, always double click
  * Always mix (or invent) terms. Your OS is Windows Explorer. Your browser is google. Your dropdown menu is your roller.
  * Always, always always write differently than what the person says. He wants you to go to evilsite.com you go to lardtub.com
  * Mishear stuff. Remember, you're partly deaf on both ears, and have -10 on eyesight. And your dog just ate your glasses.
  * Talk to him about the weather, and your wife, son or the tree in the back yard. Spiders and roaches are also good.
  * Use loooong time on EVERY action. 25 minutes to boot the computer? Sure. And always remark how slow things are going right when you need it.

The goal is to make the other one so frustrated that he want to kill someone. His choices would be his coworkers or himself - a win-win situation indeed.
Just screaming at them lets them go quicker to the next in line, and might get a small chuckle from them. Instead, bind up their time and rob them of their sanity.

Charge them with fraud

[doconnor]

I'm pretty sure lying to convince someone to give you money is a criminal offense. Saying that they are from Microsoft or that they have detached a virus are lies.

Re:Charge them with fraud

[Anne Thwacks]

AFAICT lying to convince someone to give you money is not illegal if you are Microsoft or a politician.

Some people are more equal than others.

Gullible would be an understatement

[Kenoli]

... and tells them that Microsoft has detected a virus on their PC

Believing that Microsoft knows or cares if your machine has a virus is flat out ignorant. Being okay with the idea that Microsoft could monitor you is even worse.
Never mind shelling out hundreds to an stranger for doing nothing -- how many people are really so dense?

Re:Gullible would be an understatement

[BVis]

Lots and lots of people. People shop at Walmart, for crying out loud.

Re:Gullible would be an understatement

[TangoMargarine]

Not to mention the fact that "Microsoft" is calling you on the phone. WTF?

Re:Gullible would be an understatement

[grumbel]

Believing that Microsoft knows or cares if your machine has a virus is flat out ignorant.

And what if they claim to be from your ISP? That would still be unlikely, but not that far fetched. Request for ISPs to shut down infected computers come up quite frequently when a worm is running wild, they just never have been put to practice.

Never mind shelling out hundreds to an stranger for doing nothing -- how many people are really so dense?

It don't have to be many to make it a win for the scammer. In Germany similar scams have made hundreds of thousands of euro.

Re:Gullible would be an understatement

[Todd Knarr]

If they claim to be from your ISP? SOP for externally-initiated calls: ask the caller for their contact information (name or extension), then hang up and call the entity back at the number you have for them (don't trust any number the caller gave you) and ask to be connected to that contact or the department responsible for whatever the caller alleged was at issue. If it's legit, it'll be in your account record and you'll be connected to the right person. If they've no idea what you're talking about, you just avoided a scam.

NB: this applies to everything. Bank account, utility service, the works.

Re:Gullible would be an understatement

[rastos1]

Believing that Microsoft knows or cares if your machine has a virus is flat out ignorant.

Really? Even after Microsoft - this zillion dollar company - comes up with a service that promises to

"Protect, maintain, and manage your computer with Windows Live OneCare, the always-on PC-care service from Microsoft. Working quietly in the background on your computer, OneCare protects against viruses, spyware, hackers, and other unwanted intruders."

?

Re:Gullible would be an understatement

[grumbel]

Yeah, that would work, it is however also completly unrealistic.

Re:Gullible would be an understatement

[Todd Knarr]

Why is it unrealistic? It's the rule I was taught by my parents more than 30 years ago when I first started getting bank accounts and such I'd need to protect. If they can handle the concept, I see no reason why it'd be unrealistic to expect someone my age or younger to be unable to handle it.

And if the problem is someone not wanting to handle the concept? Sucks to be them, I guess, they aren't getting any sympathy from me.

Same thing, but not techie

[nomorecwrd]

Sounds exactly like a telephone scam now happening here in Chile.

They call old people telling them that their grandson is involved in some sort of a car accident, and need money for bail or pay the affected part for the damages, anyway they tell them that if they don't get the money his/her beloved grandson will be in jail for a long time

Then, they ask for the address to send a messenger to pick up the payment, in terms of cash, LCD TV, Blu-ray, etc.

And people fell for it... even the ones without a grandson :-)

Re:Same thing, but not techie

[Arthur Grumbine]

And people fell for it... even the ones without a grandson :-)

Never underestimate the desire for any kind of human interaction, especially in the lonely elderly.

Re:Same thing, but not techie

[HopefulIntern]

Wow, thats.... incredibly sad and depressing.

Here's a thought

[Anonymous Coward]

Something about "an educated populace being the best defence against tyranny."

Then apply this to corporate interests.

Profit.

Not even remotely new

[damn_registrars]

The spoof site behind the scam is approved by McAfee's Site Advisor and bears Microsoft logos, something which both companies have failed to act upon

Spammers have been doing the same thing for years. The "Canadian Pharmacy" sites always claim to be "verified by visa", "hacker safe", "bbb approved", etc... Any half-wit knows how to copy the logos from some other web page and use them to make your page look more legit than it really is.

Re:Not even remotely new

[ais523]

It always amused me that the "hacker safe" logos (do those still exist?) had an anti-right-click script on them, as if it was somehow going to protect them from hackers. (Admittedly, the typical level of Internet scammer probably couldn't get past an anti-right-click script, but there are bound to be some out there with the minimum technological knowledge necessary to defeat one.)

Re:Not even remotely new

[AndyMoney]

..except that the McAfee logo is actually legit (meaning McAfee vouches for the safety of this site). I just verified it. That fact alone makes this a bit more alarming.

Re:Not even remotely new

[damn_registrars]

..except that the McAfee logo is actually legit (meaning McAfee vouches for the safety of this site). I just verified it. That fact alone makes this a bit more alarming.

McAffee recently brought down thousands of computers around the world by failing to test their new virus definitions on one of their top operating systems before deploying them. I'd say this more recent failure on their behalf pales in comparison.

Re:Not even remotely new

[Anonymous Coward]

I do always get a kick out of sites declaring how legit they are. To be honest those logos actually make me more worried, as I know a fake site would plaster themselves with them.

subject goes here

[charliemopps11]

I think this is a clear case in which Obama needs to use his new powers to shut down the internet until this is resolved!

What?

[stealth_finger]

Anyone who falls for this are the same people who believe the phone calls telling them won some lottery they never entered in some country they've never been too. They'd get a short sharp fuck off if they called me.

So...

[Itninja]

...this is Geek Squad then? I do a bit of sidework now and then and many of my jobs are undoing what GS did...

Run text

[clownface]

My mother-in-law had a call like this last year - they told her to type "temp spyware" and "prefetch unwanted" into the Run box on her PC to prove it was infected..

Re:Run text

[DavidTC]

Heh, I didn't know you could just add random words after directory names like that. Funny. 'C: Spot Run. Run Spot Run.'

The ability to launch a subdirectory of C:/WINDOWS by typing it into Run has always seemed a bit of a misfeature to me anyway. I'm not sure under what circumstances that actually is useful, and it's so obscure that almost no one knows it anyway. A full directory path, sure, but relative paths are a bit unlikely when no knows where the relative path is starting from!

They've called our house a few times before...

[Anonymous Coward]

...And we just tell them that we use Linux.
They either shut up then, or they continue regardless, adamant that we have a windows pc that's infected.

It's also fun to ask them how they know there is an alleged virus on my pc; and so on.

Our system says "don't go there"

[Animats]

The actual site mentioned is thenerdsupport.com

I ran them through our SiteTruth system. Here's what comes out. "Rating: "Site ownership unknown or questionable. No Location. ... This certificate identifies the domain only, not the actual business. No street address found on the site."

Compare the SiteTruth results for Geek Squad. Street addresses found, found in the US business directory, found in Open Directory.

It's not that hard to sort out the phony business sites from the real ones. You have to check business databases, not just the Web, for business legitimacy. If you just look at the web, you get bogus results like this: McAfee SiteAdvisor: "We tested this site and didn't find any significant problems." The site itself doesn't try to attack the user, so McAfee says it's good to go.

I hope they have Linux/OSX remote software

[ChoppedBroccoli]

download versions too, or they are setting themselves up for some awkward calls :P

Re:I hope they have Linux/OSX remote software

[manicb]

My dad had one of these: "Well that's very interesting, but I don't actually have a windows computer. I've actually got an Apple Mac. You know, a PROPER COMPUTER! (/me both cringing and proud at the same time)

I'm hoping they call me some time. Apparently they walk you through opening up some kind of internal errors folder and then when you find lots of error logs tell you it looks bad and use that for leverage.

Eh? What's a start menu? At the bottom left? Nope, don't see anything there. No, really. Yes, it's turned on. There's some white text on a black screen, is that good? Oh wait, it's all changed now. Uh it doesn't say start yet. There's a funny logo thing in the corner though... Accessories? Something called gedit? emacs? Oh wait, it's changed again. There's a big fish swimming around a toaster. Is that bad? What, move the mouse? Don't like those, threw it out ages ago. No, the pad doesn't work. Poke the fuzzy thing? Oh wow, you made the fish vanish! You guys are great!

This is actually what happens

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, they kept calling me for weeks, every couple of days. Here's what actually happens.

It's a Bangladesh call centre.

They call up and say that a problem on my computer has been reported to them. Of course, I know this is not true. But one time, I went along with it to find out what they were up to.

They actually talk you through getting the windows event log up on the screen - and make you count the "error" entries. Of course there are error entries.

So, they say, that proves you have a problem. My parents, for example, would be completely convinced at this point.

Then they make you go to a web site, and download a remote control application. At that point I hung up. There is no way I'm giving control of my PC over to some whackjob on the phone.

They kept calling for about two weeks, every couple of days. We're on the do not call list - which in the UK means its illegal for them to call us. And they call asking for "Mr Bruce" after I answer - my wife's name and mine are different, and the phone is in her name.

The last time they called I asked to speak to their "manager" and I told them to look out the window because the police are coming to get them. What else am I going to do? Then they finally stopped calling.

Re:This is actually what happens

[Stipe]

Similar experience here - they called, got me to run event viewer. I lied and told them there were only Info and Warning messages - but he still exclaimed "OMG! you have a virus!" it was when he said "Now, it's very important - do not click anywhere or your computer will break" that I couldn't hold back and gave him a rant at how ludicrous he was being and asking what he's trying to scam. They hung up.

Of course, warnings and errors are completely run of the mill in Event Viewer (mine are mostly the DHCP service noting that I lose my address whenever I suspend my laptop)

Re:This is actually what happens

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, i second this.
a friend i know kept getting these for a while (still are i think), scary thing is, they could have told them to do anything on the computer after convincing them (maybe while they are convincing them, say installing a keylogger which in the process brings up the error console) and the victim (i.e my friend) whould have been none the wiser.
very, very scary.

Re:This is actually what happens

[Anonymous Coward]

You can hear audio and video of the exchange with them including them being confronted as being a scam here:
http://www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/technical-support-phone-scams

Re:This is actually what happens

[mfraz74]

They kept calling here too, even though I told them that it was impossible for me to be having a problem with Windows as I use Linux, they still kept calling back. Thankfully I haven't had a call from them for over a month now.

Hey this is good!

[bwcbwc]

"... something which both companies have failed to act upon."

If this was in the US, McAfee and MS would lose their respective trademarks for failure to enforce them. What's the law in the UK like in this area?

So I just got a call

[Anonymous Coward]

From Linus Torvalds. My kernel is out of date, and he's e-mailing me the latest source.

Now that's service!

You would have done well...

[IANAAC]

You would have done well in times preceding Martin Luther. Assuming you were part of the aristocracy, of course. Bad luck if you weren't.

Suspicious part.. the call itself

[British]

So how did the "company" explain the phone call in the first place? I highly doubt when people have to register for Windows XP activation they actually leave their phone number. And if so, how does a 3rd party get said phone number?

Re:Suspicious part.. the call itself

[Anonymous Coward]

I was one the receiving end of one of these calls. They were unable to explain how they got my phone number; they also struggled with the fact that I didn't have any Windows machines.

They were also quite persistent. We got "disconnected" after I asked to speak to a supervisor. They rang back and were quite aggrieved, saying that I'd cut them off. After another round of "Tell me how you got this number and put me through to your manager" they hung up. I haven't heard from them since.

give em' a call

[Anonymous Coward]

Domain Name: SUPPORTONCLICK.COM

Registrant:
    Pecon Software Ltd.
    Pecon Software Ltd.        (peconcal@vsnl.net)
    En-27, Salt lake Sector-V
    Kolkata
    West Bengal,700091
    IN
    Tel. +91.03340101601

Yep, no more Linux for me.

[Anonymous Coward]

Back to Windows for me.

How is this clever?

[Fantastic Lad]

Learn the patterns of manipulation and lying, and then you won't fall into the traps of manipulations and lies.

The price of this valuable lesson is whatever the last scam you fell for cost you, plus the time and energy required to keep your ears open and your brain turned on.

EVERYBODY gets scammed at least once in their lives. I've been burned several times, mostly during my childhood and teens when I was still learning the law of the jungle. If you only get taken for $100 or so, then you're doing really well.

Nowadays, it is much harder to catch me in a trick, and if you try there's a good chance you'll get hurt or severely inconvenienced in the process. Also, I consider most ad campaigns, political campaigns, religions and news agencies, universities, shopping malls and economic systems to be scams. I spend a lot of time walking around laughing in amazement at the crudity and callow nature of it all.

But the real skill is in being able to navigate the world effectively without getting bitter and angry; in recognizing that life is fun!

-FL

What Scam?

[htdrifter]

I read the article and the article, from March, that it references.
I didn't see any proof that the scam exists, other then anecdotes.

Other than the original phone call, what they describe sounds like Microsoft tech support.

Perhaps the scam is a scam.

Let's hear the other side first

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no fraud.

I could cold-call someone right now, and with 95% confidence say that 1) they have a virus, 2) I can fix it.

Both statements 1) and 2) are probably true.

The only way this is a "scam" is if the guy either DOESN'T fix legitimate problems for the 185 pounds (with clamAV and standard free garbage removers of course), OR if the guy STILL charges for a "problem" even in the 5% of the cases above where the user legitimately has 0 viruses. As long as in those 5% of the cases (oh, who are we kidding: 2%) the guy says, "You know what, I was wrong, my mistake, there is no virus I can find. I waive my fee despite this time I invested with you, and despite the fact that if you had had a virus I really would have cleaned it for you."

Where is the scam again?

I had one of these calls.

[s7uar7]

Well, three actually. The first two times I told them to p*ss off but the third time I decided to play along so I could warn family and friends. The site they were trying to get me to sign up to was RichTek Support (www.richteksupport.com)

After giving me the spiel about my computer sending out error reports to them, the first thing they did was talk me through opening up the Event Viewer. Any entries in there were, according to them, caused by a virus.

Next they talked me through opening the DOS prompt. Apparently cmd stands for Computer Management Device. I then had to type assoc, and everything listed there were file types that were affected by a virus. At this point I told them I was short on time and really wanted to get this solved, which was when I finally got the URL of the service they were trying to sell.

More like this

[Sloppy]

Scammer: Microsoft detected a virus on your PC.
Callie: OMG, Microsoft ssh'd to my box, guessed a login name and password, and then escalated from that user's privileges to the point where they had read access to everything, thereby allowing them to scan my whole filesystem hierarchy for viruses?
Scammer: Yep.
Callie: Holy crap, that means I'm compromised! How do I close the hole that Microsoft used?
Scammer: Download this program, chmod +x it, and sudo run it.
Callie: Ok!

Another aspect of this issue

[Brett Buck]

It's interesting to me that this scam is predicated on the concept that the average user thinks (and accepts) that Microsoft is monitoring their computer's health. It's amazing that this is just accepted as standard and no one has a problem with the concept.

Re:Another aspect of this issue

[Ben4jammin]

I'm a network engineer and this part actually doesn't surprise me, and probably doesn't surprise anyone that has used remote control software to provide remote support to less than tech-savvy users. My wife has had me connect to her desktop at home while I am at work, and had the tech support where she works remote into her machine in her office (they are in another state). I don't think you would have much trouble convincing my wife that this is possible. Luckily, if she were to get such a call her response would be "I'll tell my husband and let him worry about it" as she spends ZERO time troubleshooting. She will randomly click on stuff until it works or she gets tired of clicking (this doesn't take long) and then she calls somebody.

But my point is that most people know there is a lot that can be done with computers that they don't understand and could fall for this. What makes me crack up is the scammers telling them to look in the event log. I have supported a LOT of windows machines and good luck finding one without at least warnings in the event log

The penalty should be Death

[AthleteMusicianNerd]

I think some viruses are bad enough to warrant the death penalty. Sometimes these things manage to shut down companies, costing millions of dollars. We should just kill these people who write these things.

That being said, I feel that the cure is worse than the disease. As long as I don't get a keystroke recorder stuck on my machine where they can get my bank info, I'd prefer not to have McAfee or Norton corrupting my machine.

Why would the Govt get involved?

[freedom_india]

There's no Tax Revenue in this.

There may be nothing actionable

[Todd Knarr]

The site doesn't seem to be posing as Microsoft, only using the Microsoft Partner logos. If that's the case, Microsoft would have to be the one to take action against them. Macafee seems to be checking for the site serving up malware and the like, and it's entirely possible the site itself is clean. In any case, again it'd be Macafee who'd have to take action about any misuse of their logos, not the regulators.

The best thing you can do to protect yourself against this kind of scam is actually not to protect just against this kind of scam. Be skeptical in general when someone else calls you making claims and wanting you to act on them. In past years it'd be someone calling claiming to be from your phone or utility company, saying there'd been a billing error and lo and behold you could make the payment over the phone to them and avoid having service cut off. More sophisticated ones claimed you'd overpayed and if you could just give them your payment information they'd credit the refund to you. This one they're claiming to be someone monitoring your computer for problems on behalf of Microsoft. The response to these should always be the same: get the details of the problem and any neccesary contact information, then hang up. Go to your contact information for the entity in question, ignoring any phone numbers the caller gave you, and place a call yourself to the entity. If it's legit, they'll have a record on your account of the problem and can connect you to the right department to handle it. If they don't know what you're talking about, chances are you just avoided a scam.

Yes we can stop it

[Simonetta]

Meanwhile, an assortment of British regulators have said there is nothing they can do to stop it.

    Yes, there is something that we can do to stop this kind of activity. Find the people who are doing it and kill them. That usually stops it.

    We don't need the people who are doing this. They don't contribute anything. They won't be missed by anybody. And if it means that their kids will be growing up without a daddy, well, then kill the kids too. They're only children, and the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. Save the future generations grief.

    While it sounds extreme and tongue-in-cheek, it's not. I realize that it feels horrible to order and facilitate the extra-judicial execution of financial criminals. But it is a feeling that decreases with each new asshole that we stuff into the wood chipper. It's good for the computer community. It gives faith to the general people that we can police our own industry. We 'take out the trash'. Gangsters do this kind of thing all the time. Plus there are too many people in the world already. These jerks won't be missed.

Re:Yes we can stop it

[Anonymous Coward]

The Edwardians called, they want their belief system back.

Re:Yes we can stop it

[Macrat]

Find the people who are doing it and kill them. That usually stops it.

Usually they have already produced offspring to replace them.

fool's gold

[czarangelus]

A fool and his money can't be kept together even at gunpoint.

Calling every Windows user in the U.S....

[stargrazer]

A customer of mine received a call while I was onsite. The caller denied he was selling anything. The guy claimed they were calling every Windows user in America. The customer hung up and the guy called again. I picked up the phone and played his game for a while. He tried to get me to look in the event viewer and count the number of errors. He then said these errors will add up and damage the hard drive!

I asked him what company he represented and he reluctantly said onlinepccare.com.

This lady called AOL for assistance before she called me. I bet AOL officially or unofficially supplied her phone number.

illegal exception errors..

[Anonymous Coward]

would be better understood by the minions using PCs if the message said. "Oops, I just pooped in my hard drive".

Sue "Domains by Proxy, Inc".

[Animats]

Domain Name: THENERDSUPPORT.COM
Registrant:

• Domains by Proxy, Inc.
  DomainsByProxy.com
  15111 N. Hayden Rd., Ste 160, PMB 353
  Scottsdale, Arizona 85260
  United States

The owner of a domain is the entity in the "Registrant" position, even if they're a "proxy service". (This is very real, and at times a legal nightmare. See RegisterFly.)

There's a 2009 legal decision here that's important: Solid Host vs. NameCheap. US registrars rely on a legislative immunity against lawsuits given them in the ACPA. But in Solid Host vs. NameCheap, the US District Court for the Central District of California held that "domain proxy" services don't qualify for that immunity. Even if the "proxy service" is also a registrar, that doesn't help them. "The court concludes that NameCheap's status as an accredited registrar does not shield it from liability in cases where it did not act as a registrar."

So DomainsByProxy is the entity to sue. They can try to pass the buck to their customer, if they can find them. But that's their problem. The proxy service may be on the hook for the activities of the entity they're helping to hide.

So Unstoppable means

[pugugly]

Unstoppable by people that go to a website and run software because someone cold called them over the phone and told them too ?

Just so I'm clear on this. What I need to tell my mother is, "If someone calls you on the phone and tells you to run software on your computer . . . don't do that."

Pug

unstoppable my eye teeth!!!

[Biggseye]

Flat out, Unless it is God on the phone, and he can do a miracle to prove it, I am not downloading anything a cold caller tells me to. not a snowballs chance of rolling through hell of that happening...

We're so smart

[AnAdventurer]

I don't give out information over the phone. PERIOD. Even companies I pay, if I forget to mail out a check and they ask I make a payment over the phone, I ask them if a bill has been emailed of USPS'ed. If they say yes, I say thank you, I will pay it when I get it. If they ask me to "verify" my account details, I ask them to go first. Like asking for the 3rd set of numbers on my card in question or my first 3 SS numbers. They always tell me they have to verify my identity first and I simply tell them that they called me. Then I point out that I have no way to verify who they say they are, the response is almost always "but we are Bank of America, why would I say I am if I am not, I really am!". Rarely do they understand my point: They called me and are asking for money over the phone.

Re:We're so smart

[grumbel]

They always tell me they have to verify my identity first and I simply tell them that they called me. Then I point out that I have no way to verify who...

If even the big companies don't get it, how can we ever expect random Joe how to protect himself from scammers? It reminds me of phishing mails, they are big problem, yet they would be easy to defend against if only the companies would actually sign their mail, but hardly anybody does.

Unstoppable at the moment yes.

[Anonymous Coward]

I know a fair bit about this scam. They are Microsoft Gold Partners, which is a nice mechanism for them to convince victims that they are legit. Although they use local phone numbers (in the UK they generally use a Bradford dialling code) they are operating out of India. Getting the Indian authorities to do anything about it is nigh on impossible. The only way to stop them is either by shutting them down in India, or by consistent and determined cooperation between enforcement authorities, the telcos and the banks. The structure (and funding) just isn't there at the moment. The only response UK enforcement authorities are able to provide is in making a series of press releases warning consumers. Very frustrating.

Ah No

[DABANSHEE]

Only contagious diseases require contagions, there's many, many, many thousands of diseases that require no contagions at all. Ever heard of genetic diseases? Ever heard of cancer? There's other types too.

People still use screensavers?

[zooblethorpe]

To counter with an example from the real world just look at the malware infections of people installing screensavers for ubuntu.

I've never heard of this myself, but assuming it's true, I'm 1) baffled that anyone still uses screensavers, and 2) baffled about where these unfortunate people are going online to find screensavers to download for Ubuntu, since anything in the official repos has been vetted, and you have to go out of your way to bother with non-repo software.

Were these malware packages you mention downloaded from the Ubuntu repositories? If not, you're basically talking about people who take the effort to engage in known-risky behaviours by deliberately sidestepping the safeguards put in place to mitigate such risks. If the official Ubuntu repository screensaver packages contained malware, I'd feel upset that Canonical failed to audit the packages, and I'd feel sorry for the people affected. However, for folks who download Ubuntu packages from random sites on the web, I'm not sure I'd have much sympathy for them at that point.

Where was the magic open source pixie dust to stop them. Oh yeah it doesn't exist.

Unless these malware packages came from the official Ubuntu repositories, this has nothing to do with open-source vs. proprietary -- this has to do with users not understanding basic computer hygiene and deliberately engaging in risky activities, which is a different kettle of fish.

Cheers,

in other words...

[m0n5t3r]

Stupidity tax: we collects it!

now seriously, the parent is right: somehow, some (a lot of?) people have lost something that is a very useful evolutionary trait: skepticism; for most of our fellow mammals, the lack of it usually means an early death (think mouse who eats poisoned food or walks into a trap without sniffing around, think the La Brea pits, think predator trying to bite more than it can chew)

Unfortunately for our species, these things most of the time only cost some discomfort (money lost), and are not life endangering; methinks we would have a much saner world if the latter were the case.

Next scam ideas

[A_Non_Moose]

How about saying that the Brit's Health Care system is extended to PC's and then download the
remote app, make them wait a few months before connecting to the machine (so it seems normal)
then take it over.

It could work.

(/tongue firmly in cheek, BTW)

Turn it around

[Anonymous Coward]

This same scam was attempted on me about 3 weeks ago here in the US. I found it funny to string the would be charlatan through as many hoops as I could during our roughly 10 minute conversation.

I got a call back number based in Florida.

When he finally realized I haven't run microsoft in this house since over a decade ago he hung up after saying "You are the wrong person".

This started months ago...

[aug24]

...when I and several other people submitted it to slashdot, complete with links to the PC Pro story that ran in February IIRC.

Thanks for the public service announcement Timothy.

If only it had been put out when it was first starting, hundreds of other people might have been warned.

Grrrrr.
Justin.

The scam demonstrated

[Anonymous Coward]

Symantec put out a video where they go "undercover" with one of these companies, then call them out on the scam afterward:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXdFRzkIypI

FALSE

[cyclomedia]

>Meanwhile, an assortment of British regulators have said there is nothing they can do to stop it.

This is bullshit (though it may be bullshit from people upon high who have no idea what they're talking about). They simplified a lot of UK law a couple of years ago with the "Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008" and "Business Protection Misleading Regulations 2008". Essentially they made consumer protection laws deliberately vague in the form of making it illegal to "Trade Unfairly".

Phoning someone, conning them into installing malware, then only removing it after receiving payment sounds pretty Unfair to me.

Definitive test of Year of Linux on Desktop

[jvkjvk]

I would pit the knowledge, technical skill, and ability to recognize an online scam of the average Linux user against those traits of the average Windows user. Any day.

When this is no longer true, it will be the Year of Linux, on the Desktop.

Regards.

If they have windows then they really are infected

[Anonymous Coward]

All a scam artist has to do to pull a quick one is call up with a pretext saying they are from an anti-spyware firm and believe the customer is infected with spyware. Would they be interested in helping them remove it? If the potential customer responds yes then the scam artist says "OK". Let me just make sure you are infected. "You do have a MS Windows machine, that is correct?" "OK, this will be $149.99. How would you lie to pay? We accept visa, master card, & discover." Then they can go on to have the visit a website that would download a little program that really does disables the MS spyware that is bundled with every version of MS Windows. It's that easy! Who defines spyware? That's a legal definition that has to be defined. Some definitions would include software that Microsoft's bundles. And with 90% of the user population using it and nobody else in the industry disabling it you can safely assume if you haven't called the person before they haven't disabled it thus when you say you believe they are infected you are telling the truth. This should be a legally sound scam. It is no different than what Norton, McAfee, and other companies are doing selling anti-virus/spyware products that don't really secure your machine either. Sure- they do something. But it is utterly worthless. Little better than the fake anti-virus software out there. If you aren't infected with anything else it is basically little more than defective and a lie in that in can protect you from anything also. It is the other stuff you get with it that is the problem usually.