Here are some links to the person you're likely thinking of (arranged
chronologically):
Anatomy of a virus call centre scam
http://www.troyhunt.com/2011/10/anatomy-of-virus-call-centre-scam.html
Scamming the scammers – catching the virus call centre scammers red-handed
http://www.troyhunt.com/2012/02/scamming-scammers-catching-virus-call.html
Interview with the man behind Comantra, the “cold call virus scammers”
http://www.troyhunt.com/2012/05/interview-with-man-behind-comantra-cold.html
And then, of course, there's Snopes:
http://www.snopes.com/fraud/telephone/microsoft.asp
Sadly, I haven't gotten one of these calls yet, but then again, I usually don't
answer calls from numbers I don't recognize. I'd enjoy wasting their time,
since that's all that can really be done to punish them.
Brent
________________________________
From: Russell Standish <li...@hpcoders.com.au>
To: friam@redfish.com
Sent: Saturday, March 16, 2013 3:21 AM
Subject: [FRIAM] A new kind of pfishing?
We've had these sorts of calls in Australia for last 2-3 years. My
wife had fun playing sport with one about 6 months ago. I usually
hang up straight away - like Doug said, there was no point mentioning
that we're a Linux (mostly) household.
I remember reading a blog by an internet security consultant, who spun
up a virtual machine whilst on the phone, and let them into it, just
to see what they did. Needless to say, they were not particularly
sophisticated, and hang up immediately he revealed to them how he'd
conned them.
I don't have a reference, and Google not really helping at present...
Cheers
On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 01:55:42PM -0600, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
> Can anybody confirm this as a new form of pfishing?
>
>
>
> I got a call from a number in DC today, somebody with a strong Indian
> sub-continent accident, telling me that my computer was sending error
> messages to the network and offering to help me correct them. (I have the
> number in my phone trap, and would report it if I knew where to report it
> to.) The next step involved my going on my computer and connect it to them,
> I assume. These guys were pretty bad at what they were doing,, but I can
> imagine a more subtle line that I might have fallen for.
>
>
>
> Does anybody recognize this?
>
>
>
> N
>
>
>
> Nicholas S. Thompson
>
> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
>
> Clark University
>
> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
>
> http://www.cusf.org <http://www.cusf.org/>
>
>
>
>
>
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> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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--
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au
University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au
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