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When Antivirus Scammers Call the Wrong Guy
ancientribe writes "Phony AV scammers posing as Microsoft dialed the wrong number when they inadvertently phoned a security researcher at home. He lured them into a honeypot to study their actions, and posted the video online here. His main takeaway: they were 'Stone Age' when it came to their tech know-how."
Scammers (and spammers) wouldn't do this stuff if it didn't pay off.
Even though these guys were idiots, they still manage to scam people. So what does that say about their victims? Ugh.
Normally this is not an issue, as in a normal call both parties will hang up. However, back in the day, pranksters figured out that this was an excellent way of annoying call-in amateur ("pirate") radio stations, completely sabotaging their game shows this way...
Hardly surprising their tech know-how was stone-age. If they were actually competent, they wouldn't be running some lame over-the-phone scam like this. They would either be working a legitimate job or running a large-scale botnet somewhere. The vast majority of criminals are stupid, because smart people either don't get into crime or don't do low-level crap like this.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Don't hate the player, hate the game...
No. I hate both.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
So they're exactly like Norton, McAfee, and CA?
How did this get modded 'Funny?'
That shit ain't funny, it's fucking Insightful.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
I say "Okay, hold on a moment please." I then leave the phone call active, put the phone on my desk or something and do something else until they get bored.
Damn straight I can blame them.
You don't see me trying to scam Bill Gates or some other bullshit.
If you are at the level where you are pulling these scams internationally over not only the internet, but also calling your victims, then you are not starving and you are probably a little better educated than those around you. These are the people that are dragging down their societies instead of building them up.
I not only blame them, I would like to shoot them for the betterment of their communities.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
You realize that fraud and scamming people in india is a crime too right?
I don't begrudge and indian guy a job at Infosys or IBM or actual microsoft. You may not like outsourcing, but you can't fault someone for taking a decent job that's a step up from what they have, and you can't expect them to feel bad about taking your job when you get paid 50x as much as they do.
But you still don't feel bad for the guy trying to rob you on the street in New Delhi. He's as much a criminal by indian standards as by western ones.
I admit, there *is* a grey area. Not the area you talked about. But there is a grey area. I feel bad for people there who have to pay bribes to buy a train ticket (which is everyone), and I feel worse when they come here and think they have to do the same thing. But there is a matter of different cultures, and pervasive corruption and ciminality that honest people can't avoid. Fine, I'll forgive some of that. But trying to theft is theft, and I have relatively little tolerance for it, and none at all when it's an intentional organized corporate activity.
No shit, I don't know how many times i have had people bring in a machine and complains "Its so slow it has GOT to be a virus" and I find they are right...its a virus called norton or McCrappy. It never fails to amaze me how bad some of these AVs get when it comes to hogging, especially on laptops. I'll give them Avast or Comodo or if they REALLY know what they are doing MSE, but Horton and mcCrap are just fucking terrible! I have been told their enterprise version, at least with Norton, isn't like that so i have to say WTF? why can't you do that with the consumer version?
But the bitch is it isn't the PC bugs I've seen much of lately, win 7 and a decent AV have that problem pretty well handled, its the mobile scams. If you want to know more check my journal entry here but please folks, remember that many haven't got the exp we have so warn them about the phone scams, because the amount of variants i've seen in just the last week tell me this one is gonna spread and be nasty as all hell.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.