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That Virus Alert on Your Computer? Scammers in India May Be Behind It (nytimes.com)
In India, a hub for tech support centers, a rise in scams forced Microsoft and the police to take action. From a report: You know the messages. They pop up on your computer screen with ominous warnings like, "Your computer has been infected with a virus. Call our toll-free number immediately for help." Often they look like alerts from Microsoft, Apple or Symantec. Sometimes the warning comes in a phone call. Most people ignore these entreaties, which are invariably scams. But one in five recipients actually talks to the fake tech-support centers, and 6 percent ultimately pay the operators to "fix" the nonexistent problem, according to recent consumer surveys by Microsoft.
Law enforcement authorities, working with Microsoft, have now traced many of these boiler rooms to New Delhi, India's capital and a hub of the global call-center industry. On Tuesday and Wednesday, police from two Delhi suburbs raided 16 fake tech-support centers and arrested about three dozen people. Last month, the Delhi authorities arrested 24 people in similar raids on 10 call centers. In Gautam Budh Nagar, one of the suburbs, 50 police officers swept into eight centers on Tuesday night. Ajay Pal Sharma, the senior superintendent of police there, said the scammers had extracted money from thousands of victims, most of whom were American or Canadian.
Law enforcement authorities, working with Microsoft, have now traced many of these boiler rooms to New Delhi, India's capital and a hub of the global call-center industry. On Tuesday and Wednesday, police from two Delhi suburbs raided 16 fake tech-support centers and arrested about three dozen people. Last month, the Delhi authorities arrested 24 people in similar raids on 10 call centers. In Gautam Budh Nagar, one of the suburbs, 50 police officers swept into eight centers on Tuesday night. Ajay Pal Sharma, the senior superintendent of police there, said the scammers had extracted money from thousands of victims, most of whom were American or Canadian.
Seriously? More like news for the nursing home.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I #%^&@$%ing hate those things, cause it invariably resutls in a paniced call from family urgently insisting on my help. Especially when it makes that obnoxious beeping noise.
Jail isn't good enough for these slime.
What a fucking buffoon. Genetic diversity is the key to our species survival. It's a shame that people have resorted to scamming instead of running honest businesses. This is not the fault of a country, but instead caused by runaway capitalism and a lack of morals to make the ends meet. Plenty of that everywhere.
The food is good, actually. Also, plenty of great minds and ideas have come from India. Don't damn a people because you are ignorant about them.
Warning! The heating ducts in your computer need cleaning. Your files are stuck in the dirt. Call us now!
Scams predate capitalism by thousands of years, so I'm not sure why you're blaming that.
It's easy to recognize these type of scammers.
They purport to be from Apple or Microsoft and offer to fix computer problems for payment.
Here's how you can distinguish these as fake calls:
Neither Apple nor Microsoft will ever fix any computer problem for any amount of money, ever.
I know several Indian people, and they're all very nice. I also like Indian food, and their classical music is nothing less than sublime.
News for grandparents, stuff from the 90's.
Who knew!!! - a scam that uses a call center *might* come from India?! Let me say... "duh!" or as my kid says "dUuuUh!"
But I'm glad to see that authorities are getting better/faster at tracking them down and closing them (i.e. actually doing something about it).
One of the fascinating pieces of this is the technology used. The honeypots are quite sophisticated - including VoIP #'s that receive the calls. It is interesting what they "listen" for and how they correlate the calls. They track the ambient sounds to figure out which calls originate from the same call center (obviously the caller-id is fake). And then the honeypot PCs that are downloading the exploits are doing some cool things too.
We could use a whole story on just the technology. The podcast "Reply All" has covered some of it. Stories on the honeypot PCs is harder to find though (IMHO).
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Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Have gnu, will travel.
Couldn't possibly be an Indian. They are a very kind people.
Had to be a Russian! Those are nasty people.
Just watch CNN and you will see.
PS: MY toaster didn't work this morning and Putin left me a note saying he broke it on purpose!
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
What is the profile of the people who fall for such scams? The popups - well, if you are not computer-savvy, I can understand. But, the phone? Somebody calls you, unsolicited, claiming to be So-and-So, and you just end up giving them your money? Really?
Finally, YOU will have a shot at a date.
Table-ized A.I.
He's agitated from his dental visit where he had all his muellers extracted.
Table-ized A.I.
I love it when these guys call me with that ominous warning that I've been infected with a computer virus. I play the very basic, naive computer user (with a short term memory problem) and try to waste as much time with these guys as possible. I use an incredibly high pitched, slow, whiny voice and ramble on and on about things outside of computers. I do as much to frustrate them as I can. When it is finally played out, I reveal that I am running OpenBSD, they get pissed off, cuss met out, and then hang up. That's 30 minutes less that they can devote to stealing someone's identity and money and I get a good belly laugh.
I've sure as hell received the calls from "The Microsoft Service Provider" telling me my computer has a virus. Really? How on Earth would I believe that Microsoft has my phone number or that they're calling me to solve a problem?
Let me try to guess a plausible lie: Your ISP has your phone number on file, if only for billing purposes. Your ISP sees a device on your network sending suspicious traffic that matches the signature of the Virus of the Month. Your ISP has contracted to refer its subscribers to a tech support shop in India employing technicians who have passed an MCSA exam, which confers the title Microsoft Certified Professional.
I hate that. I yell "scam" and hang up and the police can only do a useless warning not to agree to what the phone caller says.
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There is a sucker born every minute. Unfortunately, the rest of us make it too easy for these scammers to find them. As long as there are a healthy number of suckers out there (just .01% = 700,000 people), these scammers will never quit. Laws won't stop them. Blockers won't stop them. Do Not Call lists will not stop them. As long as they get more money out of the scam than they have to invest in it, they will do it (kind of like Bitcoin miners). The rest of us have to make it extremely expensive for the scammers to find those suckers who will fall for it. Once it costs the scammers even $1.01 for every $1 they get out of it, they will go the way of the Dodo bird and the rest of us won't be bugged anymore. So waste their time! Get a real person on the line and keep them talking. Robocalls are almost free. Paying these foreign call centers may be cheap, but they are far from free.
"You know the messages. They pop up on your computer screen with ominous warnings like, "Your computer has been infected with a virus. Call our toll-free number immediately for help.""
I don't know them, and it's not because I don't use Windows. I only see then on websites sometimes, but I take it that is not what is meant here.
I feel left out.
-- Cheers!
I use to get calls like this about 5 years ago. I answered one and when the person with a heavy India accent said "Hi, my name is Chuck." I knew that this person just lied to me and that everything they were about to tell me was also a lie. Being a bit bored I decided to play along. The following is an approximate script of what followed:
Chuck: I'm a Microsoft Technician and our servers have detected a virus on your computer.
Me: Really, which one?
Chuck: Lets start with your main Windows computer.
Me: What's Windows?
Chuck: How about we check the most recent computer you used.
Me: Ok, what should I check?
Chuck: Open up a command prompt and type the following [not sure of the details as I didn't care what he said anyway, but it looked like something to confirm a registry key existed].
Me: What's a command prompt?
Chuck: Ok, press both the windows key and the R key and type in "cmd" and press enter.
Me: What's a windows key?
Chuck: That is the key on the bottom row between the "Ctrl" and "Alt".
Me: Oh, I see it. Ok, the screen went blank and something is blinking at me!
Chuck: Now type [....] and press enter.
Me: Ok, it says something about it not being a recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.
Chuck: Maybe you missed something try [...] again.
[At this point I decided to spice things up]
Me: Nope same thing. What virus did you detect as I downloaded a few the other day.
Chuck: [moment of silence], no sir let me assure you that you wouldn't do that.
Me: I believe I did, three viruses if I'm not mistaken.
Chuck: Sir there would be no reason for you to do that.
Me: But I did. I wanted to see how they worked.
Chuck: No sir, these were installed by visiting malicious web sites.
Me: Oh, those viruses, no I deleted those ones, but I did download a few off a site a friend sent me.
Chuck: No sir, there is no way you would download a virus.
Me: But I did. Was that wrong?
Chuck: Yes, and we need to remove those.
Me: But I wanted them.
Chuck: No sir, you don't want them.
Me: But I do.
Chuck: Nobody wants a virus on their computer.
Me: I know, thats why I downloaded a few.
Chuck: Nobody would want to put a virus on their computer.
Me: But I did.
Chuck: Let me help you remove these viruses.
Me: But I want them.
Chuck: We at Microsoft want your system to run without viruses.
Me: But its my computer. Can't I run what I want?
Chuck: No, running a virus is bad for your system.
Me: Doesn't seem like anything is bad.
Chuck: It slows down your computer.
Me: It seems like it is running faster than before.
Chuck: It isn't and we need to remove them.
[this was at least 10 minutes into the whole thing and I was getting bored and the guy wasn't taking a hint]
Me: Dude, I work in IT security. I know the scam. Microsoft would never call a customer to report a problem to them.
Chuck: [click]
I'm still not sure why the guy was so confident that a person would never download a virus on purpose. Either way it was months before I got another call which I hung up on after the initial lie.
Now I just let the calls go to the answering machine. People who want to get a hold of me usually say something. If I recognize the voice I'll pick up, else I'll just hit delete after they hang up.
Also, plenty of great minds and ideas have come from India.
Yes, if enough shit is thrown at a wall, some sticks.
You do realize you've described just about every country on Earth, right? (Or do you just think that the ones with predominantly brown people are below you?) As you have so eloquently illustrated with your post, even the good ol' US of A (or where the hell you are from) has some pretty shitty people too.
Don't damn a people because you are ignorant about them.
I'm not ignorant of them, I have come across plenty and not just phone scammers. I even had an Indian GF once, and she was OK - an edge case. But the thought of her cooking for me was the deal breaker.
So you've met a couple "of them" and feel as though you are now authoritative on the subject? You dated one and kicked her to the curb because you don't know how to cook for yourself? I hope she is aware of this so she knows how much of a bullet she dodged when she rid herself of you.
I'm not seeing anything we didn't know literally 20 years ago. Entire secondary industries of people scaming indian and african sammers have arrisen. You can watch dudes call them and waste their time for hours every day.
Just another second banana
My dumbshit ex was actually stupid enough to call them, then call me on another phone asking what do to. I told her to immediately turn the computer off and hang up on them! Then I had to teach my ex and her adopted daughter how to kill the browser task using Task Manager, which is the only sure way to escape a browser takeover.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
No shit. Even senior senior citizens know it's them.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
Some of the sharpest programmers I've worked with, and some of the worst managers, both have come from India. It's a mixed bag. My coworker that was the most vehemently anti-Muslim I've ever known was a Hindu. Good optical engineer, just didn't like Muslims, since they have a higher birth rate than Hindus.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
the scammers had extracted money from thousands of victims, most of whom were American or Canadian.
Then why India cares? It cost taxpayer money to relief wealthier countries
The reason for the lucrative spice trade from India was because the British also needed to cover up the taste of their sub-standard food.
All the ones I know are smelly wild animals that let their kids scream and run all over.
You just described most of the Americans in the malls on Black Friday...
...posting? This was old news 10 or 15 years ago.
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman