Regular readers of this blog would have seen sagas such as Anatomy of a virus call centre scam, Scamming the scammers – catching the virus call centre scammers red-handed and my personal favourite, “Type www.” – “Ok, w-w-w-d-o-t”; antagonising call centre scammers. That’s not an exhaustive list, indeed there are more videos on this blog and yet more phone calls that never made it here.
A few months back there was a bunch of news around the FTC cracking down on these scams. Problem is, the FTC has about zero jurisdiction in India where the scams are originating from! They also have zero jurisdiction in anywhere that isn’t America so the effectiveness of the “crack down” is unlikely to make much difference. Consequently, it should come as no surprise that once again, this evening I enjoyed the company of a couple of gentlemen willing to help me out with my PC.
As a seasoned recipient of this scam I keep a VM ready for just such events. Unfortunately, in this case I had a tennis game to get to and frankly that was more important then listening to crooks on the other side of the world. I pushed them harder earlier this time and inevitably got hung up on but not before listening to the usual drivel and exactly the same modus operandi as usual.
If you want to see this scam run all the way through to where they want dollars (including having them remotely control my PC), take a look at the Scamming the scammers video (get a nice drink and find a comfy chair first). If you just want to see how the scam still looks today, here’s what my mates are up to: