An old fraud, but apparently still going strong: http://www.snopes.com/fraud/telephone/microsoft.asp
- ferg On Fri, Jul 15, 2011 at 6:52 AM, Drsolly <[email protected]> wrote: > I just got a fun phone call. > > It was, he said, from Microsoft. They've found a virus on my computer! > > "Oh no," I said. > > "Yes," he said. > > He then offered me a free thing for getting rid of it, which I gratefully > accepted. > > He talked me through starting up my computer, running Internet Explorer, > going to his web site, clicking on a link to download his software, and > then running his software, all of which I did eagerly, while finding ways > to get him to tell me what I ought to be seeing, so that I could tell him > that's what I was indeed seeing. > > Then he asked me for the code number that came up, and that's where I > failed. I gave him a seven digit number, as requested, and he said it was > wrong. So I gave it again. No, it's wrong. At that point, I didn't feel > that I could plausibly change the number, and anyway, I didn't know how to > change it to make it right, so I gave it to him a third time. > > He regretfully concluded that he wasn't going to be able to help me, and > we parted good friends. > > I'm guessing that the number encoded my IP address. But this seems to me > to be an apallingly expensive way to plant a bot on spmepne's computer. > What happened to good old-fashioned spam? > > _______________________________________________ > Fun and Misc security discussion for OT posts. > https://linuxbox.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/funsec > Note: funsec is a public and open mailing list. > -- "Fergie", a.k.a. Paul Ferguson Engineering Architecture for the Internet fergdawgster(at)gmail.com ferg's tech blog: http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/ _______________________________________________ Fun and Misc security discussion for OT posts. https://linuxbox.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/funsec Note: funsec is a public and open mailing list.
