TechCentral Scams Call Center Scammers

An anonymous reader writes "At TechCentral, we get on average called at least once a week — sometimes far more often — by a friendly sounding Indian national warning us that our Windows computer is infected with a virus. The call, which originates from a call centre, follows exactly the same script every time. Usually we shrug them off and put the phone down, but this week we thought we'd humour them to find out how they operate. As this week's call came in, the first thing the "operator" at the other end of the line tried to establish was who was owner of the Windows computer in the household. I'd taken the call. It was time to have some fun. I told the scammer that I was the PC owner. He proceeded to introduce himself as "John Connor." I laughed quietly as I imagined Arnold Schwarzenegger's Terminator hunting down this scamster in the streets of Calcutta. Perhaps he should have come up with a more convincing name."

Comments

better coverage

[Mr 44]

Here's some more interesting and informative articles, even:
https://blog.malwarebytes.org/...

http://arstechnica.com/tech-po...

http://www.howtogeek.com/18051...

Re:Unimpressed

[neilo_1701D]

Nice reference, Sir! That is one of the classics in 419 eater.

http://www.419eater.com/html/m...

My personal favorite was The Incredible Shrinking Artwork (http://www.419eater.com/html/john_boko.htm). But you can waste far too much time on that site.

Re:Not so sure it's harmless

[WaffleMonster]

It's not harmless stringing them along like that. What you're really doing is giving them invaluable experience and training in responding to people who might simply be on the cusp of getting taken.

Acting like an idiot who types slow and has a LOT of questions is not only amusing but wastes time cutting into profits and capacity to contact new victims. As a bonus the experience may help advance your acting career. Ultimately on the job training arguments don't appear to me to carry sufficient heft to outweigh competing arguments. When you hang up and they talk to an honest to god sucker this also counts as on-the-job training.

Remember kids your computer is off, you have to walk slowly down creeking stairs into the basement to turn it on.. and once there it is very old... it takes *FOREVER* to boot. Be sure to express your displeasure with the performance of your computer.

Just have them talk to my 3rd eldest, Larrisa

[RevWaldo]

http://itslenny.com/

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