another phone scam to be wary of

Today I had a phone call from Denise who helpfully reminded me that the guaranty on my Hotpoint washing machine was about to expire. She was willing to take my payment and forward the paperwork. I declined her offer and she put the phone down quickly.

I then went to the kitchen to look at my Hotpoint. It was then that I realised I have been in this flat for 30 years and have only had two washing machines, neither of them Hotpoint.

I guess she gets enough credit card details to make it worthwhile.

I've had similar calls on my Panasonic telly (no, don't have one), Sky box (nope), Hotpoint washer (nada) and Electrolux fridge freezer (not me). As you say, they will get lucky enough times to make it worth their while.

I did have a call a few years ago that MAY have been genuine, insisting that I extend the current manufacturers warranty.

I said I don't buy extended warranties and he continued to tell me of all the expenses that would come my way if this went wrong or that broke down. When he had finished I said I hadn't realised how poor his machine was so I'm going off to look for a more reliable manufacturer. 

i often get  a call supposedly from Microsoft telling  me about  the  viruses they have found on my pc  guess they want information to  "take over my pc" to cure it  to which I answer I havnt   got a pc they soon hang up

cazman wrote: i often get  a call supposedly from Microsoft telling  me about  the  viruses they have found on my pc  guess they want information to  "take over my pc" to cure it  to which I answer I havnt   got a pc they soon hang up

You were lucky. I tried telling one of the "Microsoft" people that I am only using an Android tablet and he got very rude when I said I didn't have a "windows" key on the non-physical keyboard. I got another one yesterday but I didn't stay to chat with him.

I think they are trying to get you to either allow them access to your machine so they can help themselves to passwords etc. or get you to install ransomware, a program that locks you out until you send them money. Sorry, that's not true. It's a program that locks you out and asks you to send money.

Do a search on youtube. There are loads of people scambaiting them. Try Googling 'youtube windows scam'.
Basically they take over your machine and run a few what they call diagnostic routines [which aren't] and point out 'faults' [which are actually normal].
They then calculate an estimate for fixing your machine, which comes to hundreds of dollars, which you must pay online there & then.

As I said, there are many scambaiter videos out there, but they get a bit samey and boring after the first few.

Frank

I've had a pristine "just installed" copy of Windows XP installed in Virtualbox on a PC here, which I keep meaning to try them out on and see what they get up to (the host PC is Linux-based, so even if they were to do the impossible and get something nasty out of XP and into the host it wouldn't do anything). Virtualbox has a really useful feature where you can end a session by dumping any changes made to the original configuration, so it doesn't matter what changes they make.

But I can never be bothered. Slavishly doing exactly what they tell me to (but on a Linux PC) generally occupies them for a while. The call typically ends when I start to gently ask them how they feel about doing a job which involves nothing but lying to people and cheating them out of money. Sometimes they get upset when I say that I have more respect for a street thief than someone who uses a phone to steal from people on a different continent...

cazman wrote: i often get  a call supposedly from Microsoft telling  me about  the  viruses they have found on my pc  guess they want information to  "take over my pc" to cure it  to which I answer I havnt   got a pc they soon hang up

Mrs Rimini finds it fun to tell Microsoft callers she has a Mac!