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TechCentral Scams Call Center Scammers

Posted by timothy on from the my-personal-record-is-about-20-minutes dept.

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."

15 of 251 comments (clear)

  1. Not so sure it's harmless by Infiniti2000 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Not so sure it's harmless by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      I rather like telling them to hold on while I go into the other room so I can hear them better, then setting the phone down with the line still open and going back to whatever I was doing before they called.

    2. Re:Not so sure it's harmless by Zeromous · · Score: 5, Funny

      I deliver them to a VM i run just for this purpose, with the background of goatse.cx

      I then tell them it's not so much the infection as it is the distention.

      --
      ---Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A START
    3. Re:Not so sure it's harmless by WaffleMonster · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

  2. Got one of these once by Peter+Simpson · · Score: 5, Funny

    I kept the guy online, playing dumb, for about 15 minutes, until he finally gave up and told me to call Microsoft.

    At which point, I asked him if I should tell them I was running Linux.

    His reaction was priceless...and unprintable!

    1. Re:Got one of these once by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Did the same thing. When I told him I was running Linux, he said "Sir, you have been wasting my time!" to which I replied "You called me." Then he hung up. Priceless.

    2. Re:Got one of these once by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      My high score was 50 minutes. I kept pretending my computer was rebooting on it's own and took a long time to boot up. When I finally caved and told him I run Linux, he STILL tried to sell me because I could gift his product to my parents because 'older people are not so good with computers'.

      Time permitting, I always take the call and keep them on as long as possible.

    3. Re:Got one of these once by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      What could possibly be unprintable on slashdot?

      Unicode.

    4. Re:Got one of these once by Oligonicella · · Score: 5, Funny

      Sir or madam, I truly admire your tenacity - and your sense of the sublime. I'm a little more direct and short. As I've said here before, when I get such a call I immediately start talking in a soft and quaky voice. Like that of an eighty year old. This makes them listen closer and hopefully turn up their volume. I lead them on for a couple of minutes so they're focused and calm and then scream at the top of my lungs like I'm being murdered with an axe. Reactions range from screaming themselves, cursing me out and once trying to find out if I was OK at which point I laughed and *then* they cussed me. All quite cathartic.

      Moral: If you work for sleazoids you're a sleazoid, don't expect civility.

  3. Truly the best scams by blueshift_1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Truly the best scams by AudioEfex · · Score: 5, Interesting

      True, but the gap of "standard knowledge" isn't as bad as it used to be. At least it's getting better. If any message has gotten through, it's been not to give out information to an unknown phone caller. I'm sure it must work sometimes or they wouldn't be doing it, but since email spam has been largely eliminated from most end-user experiences, it seems going back to the phone scams is a bit too late because folks are going to click on an email link much more readily than give out any info to an unknown phone caller these days.

      I have a friend in her 50's who's parents are in their late 70's, and they just got one of these calls last week. To give you an idea of their technical proficiency, they still use AOL mail (and Facebook is too difficult for them to use). The caller wanted their windows installation ID. They kept them on the phone for like 20 minutes - while they used their other phone to call Microsoft, LOL. The scammer gave up when they realized what was going on, and they never gave them any personal info. So, even they knew something was "wrong" and didn't fall for it. That's just one anecdotal example, granted, but again these are the very folks that they are trying to get who have wised up and are especially vigilant about phone callers in particular (organizations like AARP are actually really good at educating folks about not falling for scams).

      The funny (sad?) part was the parents understood exactly what happened during the attempted scam (bad guy trying to get their computer info), but what they didn't understand was why Microsoft didn't seem very interested in "getting 'em" after the fact - they wanted to fill out a report about the scam, etc., and MS basically said "you did the right thing, thanks, /click" - they just didn't understand why MS wasn't going to investigate further, call the phone company to get records, etc. That was the only difficult thing for them to understand and had to be explained to them, LOL. So even though they may not totally get the larger view of the picture, they knew not to give out any information which was the important part.

  4. Unimpressed by namgge · · Score: 5, Funny

    The author is overselling himself. You haven't scammed a scammer until you've got them to send a bag man from Nigeria to a remote Scottish Island to collect your investment in cash.

  5. Re:1at post finally by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    and you fucked it up

  6. I have had a few of these calls by HornyBastard · · Score: 5, Funny

    I usually get 1 of these calls per month.
    I like to see how long it takes before they swear at me and hang up.
    One time i started the conversation with "I like pie", and spent the next 20 minutes telling this guy about all the pies i have eaten in my life.

    My favorite of all time was a lady with a very attractive voice. Every time she told me to do something, i made up a bullshit error message. She was sounding very confused when she finally asked me what version of windows i was using and i told her windows 19.
    She tried to explain to me that the latest version of windows was windows 7, but about halfway through my story about how i wanted a very fast computer, so i built a time machine to go buy a new computer in the future, she started using some very colorful language, including a few words that i have never heard before, and i can swear in 17 languages.

    Every time i get bored, i watch the phone and hope for another call from them.

    --
    Death has been proven to be 99% fatal in lab rats.
  7. Just have them talk to my 3rd eldest, Larrisa by RevWaldo · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://itslenny.com/

    .

    --
    Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!