75ZT Community

For a few months now I've been getting calls from an Indian call centre telling me there are some errors with my computer and i must turn ot on and connect to the internet. Every time i argue that i have up to date anti virus software and the computer is running fine and how can i see what the problem is. Their reply has always been you can't see the problem, its hidden, connect to the internet and i can fix it. My reply has always been no and put the phone down. They called again today so with the ethernet unplugged i thought id entertain him a bit and firstly i have never felt so patronised. secondly i did find something. He told me to go into computer manager and then event manager and there was quite a list of errors most from when programmes don't respond but a fee warnings to do with tcpip and idsn... Hello problem with AOL again. Anyway he wanted me to connect to the net and have his engineer access my pcand the errors out for me online and charge upto £80. I declined his offer but can't help wondering how on earth he knew there were these error codes on my pc?

There always are error codes, every time a piece of sw hangs, is slow to respond etc

It is indeed a scam

Agreed, a scam, there are always errors in event log from when I've ever looked at them.

This particular scam seems to be growing massively right now.

Perhaps you also need to ask how did they detect errors on your PC in the logs?

They have either hacked in to your PC - very unlikely or know that all PCs have errors so use this to try to convince you that there is something wrong.

Also how did they get your phone number - they did not, just ring random numbers until they find a mug.

Paul

They addressed me correctly by name, saying they are calling from 'windows'

I told them that they are scamming barstewards as I am running Linux. The latter is not true, unfortunately, but it got rid.

Bernard wrote:They addressed me correctly by name, saying they are calling from 'windows'

I told them that they are scamming barstewards as I am running Linux. The latter is not true, unfortunately, but it got rid.

Perhaps you are not ex-directory and with BT?

From another forum that I belong to:

This particular scam was on Radio 4 a couple of weeks ago - the recipient of the 'microsoft' call was a bbc reporter and strung them along for ages, while recording the very complex instructions he was being given to 'fix the problem'.

When he admitted that he in fact didn't use microsoft as he operated an Apple computer the scammer got very cross and accused him of wasting his time!

Yeah it stinks of a scam. Especially when they phoned my Nan and the thing with the most computing power in her house is probably her 25 year old boiler got the same call... but when she said I don't have a computer they guy said in that case would you like to buy one!!!
I just need your bank account details and sort code then we can successfully downgrade your upgradings.
The sad thing is they must catch out hundreds of people

I'm sure you are right, but the more forums this gets posted on, and replied to, the wider the message will spread.

Just thought, in case anyone wasn't sure. Here is the info from snopes.com who are a useful resource for finding the true from the fable....

http://www.snopes.com/fraud/telephone/microsoft.asp

I had a couple of calls saying my ISP had reported my computer was taking up all of their bandwidth in the area, they offered me a discounted deal to fix it as they had a special agreement with my ISP.
I asked them who my ISP was and the line went dead

Nice one Dave, does 1471 or number display show a phone number?
Could have much fun pissing them off!