A mate on Saturday (a beautiful, sunny, warm and clear winter's Saturday when I was at Norths Devils Leagues Club, by the way) let me know that he'd received a call from an overseas person from what sounded like the typical Indian call center, however the person on the end of the phone was claiming to be from Microsoft Support and claiming that a vulnerability had been discovered on his computer through Error Reporting and that he needed to turn his computer on immediately and go to a website this caller was reading out so that he could "fix" the vulnerability.
Now, Craig read this correctly as a fraudulent and malicious caller and basically, in not so many words, told the caller that he wasn't near his computer and couldn't turn it on right now, so the caller should find someone else to "help", maybe his own mother. :)
So basically these spamming, phishing arseholes are now making personal calls to see if they can infect your computer - trying to take you for a complete idiot over the phone instead of via email.
Microsoft DOES NOT make personal calls offering to fix your computer. Unless you KNOW the person calling, don't let them in (to your home, your computer, your car, whatever).
Regards,
The Outspoken Wookie
2 comments:
I received this email reply from a friend in Sydney...
I just read your blog post about the Dodgy MS calls, we have had them down here too.
We had friends here in Melbourne called from a company in Sydney, stating almost the same story in the blog, we passed on the details and phone numbers to Sholto at CRN Mag, and they were trying to follow up, both with an article and Microsoft.
Just a heads up to say it’s not uncommon and it seems Australia wide at the moment.
I have had several calls like this over the last 3 years. But not acting as Microsoft, an IT company that gets alerts from a Global Internet monitoring station and that they had detected a virus on my computer and alerted their company. She wanted me to power on my computer and that is as far as she got because I told her she was a scammer and hung up the phone.
Post a Comment