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

Truly the best scams

[blueshift_1]

All the best scams make you feel as though they are helping you... Also, there are greater quantities of users who lack the standard knowledge to be able to see through these. That's the problem with making computing so main stream... it dilutes the depth of knowledge of the system.

Fail

[Anonymous Coward]

This article isn't particularly well done, their scam of the scammers was extremely limited and provided little to no additional information on this well known fraud. They also fail to realize that many of the people that work in these calls centers believe they are working valid jobs to some degree or another. They don't realize what they are doing is outright fraud and malicious (in some cases).

Re:Fail

[LWATCDR]

The reason is simple. They are poor people in the third world taking money from the rich people! Why should they care? They are sticking it to the man.
Just remember that next time you feel no sorrow sticking it to the man. You are the man to someone else.

How to make a telephone solicitor mad

[goombah99]

Last century, I worked for a magazine sales company that did telephone soliciting. We loved it when people slammed down the phone because it meant no wasted time. The worst was when someone wanted to chat. One time a kid answered the phone and I asked for the dad. She said, "He's out in the garage under the car" and ran off to fetch him. It was a dillemma what to do next. Hang up? wait?. Another time the person on the other end kept repeating only the word yes during my sales pitch and then 5 minutes in switched to "can you please speak chinese". Even when I said "goodbye".

These days, I tell them I'm really glad they called and I need to move to the phone by the computer so I can purchase what they are selling. Then I set the phone down and go about what I was doing.