Mr Simon Watson from the technical department of Windows

[Bledlow]

Rachel:

Ryan? I had a call from Ryan today! From the technical department of Windows, no less.

[mrcharly-YHT]

What would happen if they called each other?

[Cudzoziemiec]

On the grounds that eg advertising copywriters are the biggest suckers for advertising, they would both con the other!

[huggy]

I get a couple of these calls a month from Mr SW too.  The most recent call I managed to waste about 20 minutes of his time:
Me: "oh, yes, let me just turn on my computer" (it's very slooooow at starting up), put handset on desk...8-ish minutes later...I hear something issuing from the handset.
SW: "How is it going there?"
Me: "Not yet, nearly there" replaces handset on desk...a few more minutes later
SW: "Have you got the desktop yet?"
Me: "just got there, now what is it you want me to do?"
SW: usual blurb to get me to look at the system event log at tell me that all those pretty red triangles show the problem I have
Me: "oh, dear, I see what you mean"
SW: "You need to go to this website and download some software"
Me: "ah, so you want me to give you access to my PC so you can remotely control it, I don't fancy being scammed today, thanks all the same"
SW: "This isn't a scam"
Me: "Yes it is and I think I've wasted enough of your time now so would you like to go?"
SW: "Ha ha, we've already made lots of money out of you because this is a premium rate call that is costing you £199/second"
Me: chuckle "oh really? Let's just rack up some more of those seconds shall we?"
SW: "You will see on your phone bill at the end of the month!"
Me: "I'm putting the handset back on the desk now"
SW hung up after about 30 seconds, I guess he'd made enough out of me by then 

[munkeh]

ah, these clever chaps.....

the last few times they rang up, i put on my best indian accent.

"Hello ? Can i help you with your supportings ?"

I make lame excuses about having been from Dheli or Bombay or somewhere, and just go around in circles, asking about random things like " Is the weather nice where you are "  and "does your mother know what you do for a living"

Take all the fun you can get .

[Woofage]

I had an odd one the other day.
"David": Hello. How are you? How is your computer running today?"
Me: "Splendidly, thanks."
David: "Have a good day. Bye."

 

[Polar Bear]

Three times today which is a fecking nuisance as I am awaiting an important call.

Feck off feckers!!!

[Vince]

Been quiet for a while, but today I had a call from Peter Jones. He didn't want to invest in my cunning plan. 

[Asterix, the former Gaul.]

My first experience of one of these calls recently. They rang off, thanking me for being so rude   I hadn't insulted them, nor sworn nor nuffink

[hatler]

The call I just took was from Alex. Pathetic attempt.

[contango]

Don't think I mentioned this one before.

The guy called and gave me the usual gubbins about my computer being infected with viruses (it made a change from internet cyber hacking agents), and asked me to turn on the computer.

So I duly obliged, and talked him through the startup process. Then I paused and said "Ah, Scandisk is running. I forgot I set that to run, trying to fix this problem with my computer. Do you mind waiting while it runs?". The guy first tried to get me to turn off the computer, but didn't press the issue when I said the screen said not to turn off my computer. So I slowly talked him through a fictitious progress from 0 to 100%, periodically asking him random questions like how many kids he had, what the weather was like where he was, asking if he minded me humming while he waited and so on (he didn't, so I did).

After about 15 minutes my fictitious progress bar had made it to 100%, but there was another surprise for him. I said that it had finished, but that was step 1 of 5 but it was OK because step 2 was at 3% already. He declined my invitation to hold on any longer, but said he'd call back later. Sadly I was out, but came home to four missed calls from unknown numbers so I can only assume he did try to call me back. It's a shame I missed his call - it would have been fun to see if he fell for the same line again, or the line that it was still running but step 4 of 5 was at 17%.

[TimC]

My company has just caught on to this scam, and has deliberately allowed the whole process to take place (on a computer not connected to anything else in the company) to analyse the scam installation and the methodology. The IT department must be having a slack week, I guess!

[hatler]

Very cool. Keep us posted with their findings if you are able.

[TimC]

It might be possible. They've said they'll tell us anything we need to know, but I suspect the detailed findings will go straight to the Police. 

[Ham]

A little odd, as the systems are mostly well known, tbh. Most of these exploits are based around VNC/re worked VNC which is Open Source remote control software, the scam is to get you to install and establish a connection. As to what the payload is, that will vary from exploit to exploit.

[TimC]

No idea, Ham, not my field. As I say, maybe a slack week in IT! But someone made the effort to write a fairly long email to all 10,000 of us in the company about it.

[jsabine]

Someone's got an intern?

[Afasoas]

I doubt an intern would be trusted to isolate the affected machine from the rest of the network.

A honey pot could be fun... the attackers my give away far more information about themselves from such an attack than they realise making it possible to exploit them.

[TimC]

Someone's got an intern?

I don't think we have any interns.

[contango]

One of the guys I talked to at great length wanted me to go to a web site which was something like support.me

From what I could see of a visit to the site (not while my man was on the phone) it looks like it could be a legitimate support site that allows people to connect based on some kind of shared code. Presumably if I had given my man the code he could have connected to my machine and done whatever he saw fit to it. Somehow I suspect his "free service" might have cost me a lot of money to fix.

[jsabine]

Someone's got an intern?

I don't think we have any interns.

I wasn't entirely serious, more commenting¹ on the perceived value of (a) doing this, complete with long emails to the entire company, and (b) an intern's time.



1: Obliquely, sure. Opaquely, no doubt.

[Jaded]

"Hello, this is Mr so and so about your computer"
     "Oh, Hello."
"Your computer is reporting that it has some problems, we need you to turn it on"
     "Oh, ok, I will do that it will take a bit of time. I have to put the phone down as I only have one hand"

     goes off to get dressed.

     Some time later: "Hello? I've done that. I've turned the computer round"

"OK, what can you see on your screen?"
     "Oh, I can't see anything, it is turned round. It took quite a while as I've only got one hand"
"OK can you see the Start button?"
     "No, I can only see some wires"

long silence

"Can you open Windows then, please sir"
     "Oh, on I'd rather not open a window, it is rather cold, and it is raining."

long silence

"Your computer is reporting it is slow we need to help you, blah blah. Is it turned on?"
     "Oh, you told me to turn it round and I did that, it is turned round. It was quite an effort as I only have one hand."
"What can you see in the bottom left corner?
     "I can see the wire. The wire that goes to the printer. That's what's in the left hand corner."

long wait - probably going through the list of prompts

"We need to look at Windows. What is in the bottom right hand corner of your screen?"
     "On, there's nothing there."
"Nothing? Can you not see any icons?"
     "No, there's nothing. Only some dust."

long wait

"OK, your computer is working fine now."
     "Oh, thank you vey much!"

That' a precis...

[rafletcher]

I bought a "triple" BT6500 phone set. £50 and include answerphone. Thus far the "nuisance screening" feature has blocked 100% of such calls.  And I get to cancel my £3 / month 1571 answer service so they'll have paid for themselves in 18 month. Not as much fun maybe, but I can live with that.

[Polar Bear]

Interesting purchase.

Mrs Simon Watson called today.   Well, it could have been for all I know.   She announced herself as being from Miscrosoft IT department - I haven't heard that one before.

We had a long discussion about my windows computers sending out stuff and then she claiming that hackers must have control of my computer.   We did a little bit of dancing around which computer and which version of Windows which she inevitable kept getting wrong before she told me that I was very stupid and she would have to block my machine.   I told her in no uncertain terms to go ahead as I don't do business with fraudsters.   The phone went dead.

9 hours later and my computer is still not bloc ... 

[Wobbly John]

Apparently Mr Simon Watson works for BT as well now, i.e. there is a similar scam where the caller pretends to be from BT.