Microsoft at a loss over Event Viewer scam

This Microsoft issue is real I am a PC consultant and have my clients call should there be a problem with their PC. I have had clients cry being that upset that they have paid these people. And others have hung up. So please relay onto Microsoft the threat is real. Even had a call from a client today.

Indian laws may be competent to handle these scams but they are not helping all the people getting scammed!
A lot of people know what to do but plenty don't.

These people (there were at least 4 of them) rang whilst I was at work. My 15 year old son took the call. He told me they were really bossy and demanding him to go into things on the PC. They were actually yelling down the phone at him. He did eventually have the sense to hang-up and not do what they told him. Scary stuff. Bully tactics and I'd say yeah, this is a pretty serious threat, especially for young or vulnerable people.

I just had my second call from these people - female Indian sounding called herself Sylvia - same person both times I think - the phone line is very crackly. The first time she said her company "Computer Maintenance Dept" was working with Microsoft. The second time no mention of MS! They hang up when you start asking questions, but I have plenty of less knowledgeable friends and I worry some of them might be scammed!

Perhaps it is time to give Ubuntu operating system a go. At least when these people call up, you can straight away tell them you do not have a Windows PC.

i was just called by an indian accented gentleman stating he was from wwwgtechsupport.net. he said they were a Microsoft partner. He asked me to look into event viewer and tried to convince me the errors and warnings were very serious. He then wanted me to down load a remote access tool and surrender control of the PC while their technician fixed my computer. I stated that only a complete mug would allow access to an unverified source. He boldly stated we could check them out out on their website and call them back when we were ready to prevent a total crash of our computer.
I have since posted a warning to all my friends on FB.

Just recieved a call from an indian accented guy, wasn't to sure what company he said he was from as the noise on the line was insainly loud, asked me to enter 'INF' in the run window/box and that should 'C:\windows\inf' which he told me ment Infection... Then got me to do the event viewer and informed me the errors from MySQL where caused by the 'Virus' . Then told me he would put me through to a 'Microsoft Technician'. Thats when i hung up...

Get a whistle. For any abusive callers, blow the whistle down the phone. Very quickly puts paid to abusive callers, as the suddenly can't hear in one ear.

I get those calls a lot, so much infact i have unplugged my phone and have no intention on plugging it back in again. Who the heck needs a landline anyway?

THEY NEVER GIVE UP!

Indian caller from "Microsoft Support, Sydney" called me and said "Hello, are you ****?" - he knew my full name.

Then the spiel about "We are being alerted that your computer is spreading viruses on the internet - please run EVENTVWR and tell me what you see".

At which point I said "No way buddy - I'm gonna Google this first" - and hung up!

Thus, I am here to report YET AGAIN - the Indian Curse has struck. This is plainly ridiculous and a SERIOUS security threat to innocent PC users. Are these people linked to Al Queda? How would we know?

WHAT THE HELL IS MICROSOFT & THE GUMMINT GONNA DO ABOUT IT????

Grrrrr.

Jeff

I got a call last night from an Indian guy also (fancy that?). Anyway as I work in IT I know he couldnt fix anything and nothign was actually wrong.. So I just played along cos I was bored and did the event viewer thing, he said a few times 'OMG the errors sir, you have big problems. We can make your PC faster and stop it crashing cos it will soon'. So he asked me to go to start>> run>> type in www.letmein123.com and enter in some code or something so they can fix my machine. I said ok no problems but the website isnt loading. He then tried to talk me thru turning off the firewall checkign the address etc all the time I was watching the footy.
So he said the warranty is out and they can also renew it make PC faster and fix teh errors!. When I said I built the PC from scratch he said a bit frustratingly, no sir all the parts together come under warranty, hahaha crazy.
So then I said ok hang on I put the phone down and walked away, I could hear him occasionally say hello, hello sir are u there, to which I reply 'yes, yes hangon PC is slow/frozen will u fix it for me' give me a minute'.
The call took 45 minutes before he hung up heheh. My land phone says the call is from 'overseas' so I know its them everytime. The next thing I will do is buy one of those loud alarm horns that look like a spray can but make a really loud high pitch noise and get him to push his ear to the phone (I'll talk softly so he puts his ear close) then blast his head off!
hahah you can have fun with these guys, also I turned off the wifi and unplugged Internet it before hand, just in case....
we can fight back like this cos the authorities cant do anything!!

I have received calls from these Indian dickheads too. I usually give them a mouthful of unchristian like words and hang up. Today I decided to keep them on the line and play along, lol. Like everyone else he wanted me to run eventvwr blah blah so I decided to ask for lots of details about him personally. He then asked me how old I was and said I was of a similar age to his mother, haha.

Anyway, I kept telling him that we are not all stupid in Australia and that my computer was not infected etc. He said I was "sick", so I suggested he take further classes in customer relations!!

After about half an hour he accused me of wasting his time, haha.

Attention Readers & Computerworld,

I have literally just received a phone call from a "I.T consultant" claiming to be from Microsoft. Given the randomness of the phone call, I decided to 'Google' the directions he was giving me whilst he was on the phone.

[As described above, he prompted me to turn on my computer and run the command "Eventvwr"]

Consequently, I arrived at your page, which confirmed my suspicions that it was in-fact a scam.

After hailing abuse at him, he hung up the phone.

I am simple writing to inform others that this scam is current as of 23/5/2011 -

So BE AWARE!

Thanks again Computerworld for alerting me to this scam!

Renaldo

Sydney, Australia

Just had a similar call. She (Indian sounding, from "Sydney") said she was authorised to fix WIndows errors. I asked "Authorised by who?" - "The Software Department." "Is that part of Microsoft?" "No, It's the company that authorised us to fix these Windows problems." Sounded fishy from the start. I kept asking questions "How do you know the computer was linked to me and my phone number, address, etc" Said it was from my computer, and the error reports she got. I know my computer doesn't know my address or phone number, so I guessed she probably just got my phone number from the phone book, and was just guessing that I even had a computer.

I am constantly getting this call and went through with it after about the 50th phone call at a cost of $193.79 dollars and what for god knows they told me they where from Microsoft and that my computer was out of date with the microsoft licence and yes it is old and was playing up so went with it

Now I have a paid AVG program on the computer and well still having problems

I Sent an email to there support section and they returned my email and said they would call today they did and I was not home asked me to call there support centre but left no number but after reading comments about this not sure what to do now

Yes It's a problem that hasn't gone away I know so many people that they have tried to con and have succeeded with some.I myself have had them call me at least half a dozen times.Knowing it's a scam I've strung them along waisting their time playing the fool till they have realised that I'm having them on getting some sort of revenge.

I have just got one of these calls and thought I would check up on the net about them. They are calling themselves
onlinerepairworld.com and if I dont send them some money to their account I am in breach of my Microsoft license agreement because I am operating my computer with all these viruses and they will close me down so I cant use a computer ever again. I had to pay 197 into their bank account by wednesday. I have a print out of their bank details and taking to the police to see if they can use to get them. I talked the operator down to 50 bucks. I have his name and number wonder if there are as many holes in his name as the story, he is Indian and his name is Mark Gordon. lol I am guessing there is.

I also have been getting phone calls from these people. The first few times I just hung up because I couldn't understand what they were saying. Today (June 14/11) I stayed on the phone to try and figure out what they wanted. Basically they were asking me to go into my event log and showed me a bunch of errors. They then said that if I didn't fix it eventually my system would breakdown. I didn't buy it so when they asked me if I had internet connection I lied and said no it was not working. They then asked if they could call back in a few days I said sure because I knew by then I would know if it was a scam. Now I do and I have a few choice words for them when they call back. Also a note when I asked directly if they were from microsoft (the first person said they were) the man said no he was a server manager that viewed a bunch of different ISP and system logs and were contracted to call people....ya right! I hope everyone else who gets one of these calls will think to do some research before giving these scammers any info.

I get this call once a month or so. I run a Mac so there was never any chance that they were real and I have gone with them a few times to see if I could get anything useful out of them to identify who they were but no luck so far. If India has laws to deal with this then it's about time they acted on it.
It must work on some people or they wouldn't keep doing it. It is a crime that no one seems to take seriously.
Any ideas?

I got a call from these scammers on Saturday, decided to string them along, also managed to record the last 8 minutes of there call.

I've written a blog post about the call and also included the recordings - lakeuk.blogspot.com

Howdy all
I just got one of these calls. I wasn't sure if genuine or not at first but started to get a bit sus when I was put onto a supervisor technician and he started telling me about all the possibilities that could be wrong. At this point I asked "So which of my computers is sending you the error messages?" cause I have more than 1 PC. He wanted to know if they run off the same broadband connection, to which I replied yes, and said then they both have the same infection. At this point I knew he was full of it and asked him how if one PC was infected, but the other was turned off, how could it become infected, then he went offf on some rant about Cisco and some other tech companies that they are "affiliated with"and said I needed to connect to their computer and talk with their "Microsoft technician". I asked if he was from Microsoft and then I got a no. While all this was happening I was googling ëventvwr and found all this, then I read passages out to him from the article and he started to get frustrated with, I said based on what I'm reading here we aren't going to continue this conversation and hung.

I got a call today and was well aware of the scam.
I played along asking them how the climate was over there and just general questions. Which nothing to do with computers and they satyed on the line for about 30 minutes lol. Finally i agreed to let them log into my pc this went on for another 15 minutes. I eventually told them that i was actually watching TV lol.
Then i let him have it.

"Nice try Apu hopefully i have stopped you from calling more innocent people during this period"

along with a few other choice words

thank you i had gotten a call today from "microsoft" a man who i couldn't understand. he told me that microsoft were reciving errors and warnings from my computer. i had been transfered twice within this call. i was starting to suspect things were wrong when he took ove my computer and had acces to my webcam. an icon apeared as a web cam in a window. the man took over my computer and showed me the "errors" and "warning". then after questions like "how old are you?" and i replyed they wanted to speek with my mom. i said she wouldn't be back till 3:30... they said they would call around 4:00. after we hung up i was very confused. why had the called me? how did they know my phone number. and what really struck me was when i looked on my redial on the phone... there number didn't show up... now i'll have to wait till four and tell them that they are a scam....

just got my 3rd call in 2days from windows tech support in melbourne said i had very bad virus on my computer[ indian man] allan dawson,ha yelling turn on your computer sir over and over said dont no how .he did however give me a number to ring and when i rang an hour later the man on the other end said straight away you want allan dawson i said no and hung up dont no if real or scam [0390169627] was the number

Had a call from them Saturday - stating they were from Virtual PC Doctor - American accented guy "Bob Anderson" asked me to check my computer - handed me over to American Accented woman named "Angelina" who then asked me to connect to interent which I did not. They did provide a phone number - checked web site for Virtual PC Doctor and that number listed as contact - Googled the phone number and came across Anti-Phishing info. I called the number today and "Angelina" answered but identified herself as "Helen". Was quite rude when I asked her if she was aware her company and activites were listed clearly on the internt as being a scam. She said that they woulnd't advertise themselves on internet if they were scammers and wouldn't provide a help desk. They are very clever. I kept waiting for them to ask for the IP address but actually going into Event viewer and seeing errors did give me pause for thought.

I got rung by Mr ronnie O Conell an Irishman he said with an Indian accent ringing he said from Washington USA.Frankly you have to as thick as 99 short planks to fall for it

I had a caller the other day and i played along with her, i gathered she was calling from India or there abouts. She insisted i had a virus in my pc, i asked what version of Windows? a little quiet for a moment and then she said XP... I went on to tell her i use Linux. She asked what that was, i said..well it ain't F*** Windows and i went on to call her a scammer and a thief etc... she then hung up on me which i thought was quite rude LOL.
The moral of this story... Everyone should get rid of Windows and use a Linux operating system instead like i do, it's much safer and those Indians have no idea when it comes to Linux.

They have tried to scam me twice. First time I just played along and yelled at them for being wrong went they tried to tell me the error messages were from a virus when it was me trying to setup some http daemon.
The second time I said I had an Apple and they hung up.

I have been contacted twice by different people both sounded Indian. I knew that they were a scam, on the first one I had a bit of fun, and strung them along, and then started reading stuff about their scams that were on the internet.
When I got the second call, I had enough, I asked for his phone number (in case we got disconnected) and then proceeded to tick him off, telling him he was a scam, that he should get a real job. I rang the number back and harassed them a couple of times. I have now purchased a whistle, and if they tell me to type in eventvwr again, then press ok, I will blow my whistle and then say "oh I just did what you told me, and my computer just made that awful noise". So if you want to have some fun give 039010562 a call and ask for James.

I really liked the article, and the very cool blog

It is useful to be able to read so many recent comments - the same scam is still alive and well at present in the UK and has a certain initial plausibility for those too polite to contradict the arrant nonsense being spoken in such strong Indian accent. But any initial sympathy for the poor bastard needs to be discarded as early as possible to try to dissuade him from calling again.

A few minutes ago I had a lady call with this scam. She said there were reports of errors on our computer and I said we had three... I had to tell her three times that I have more than one Windows computer and ended up yelling at her because she couldn't tell me which computer was having a problem. Every once in a while the line on her end would go really quiet rather than telemarketing noise, so I think she was being coached on how to scam me, and eventually she put her supervisor on the line with me. Possibly the Punjabi fellow from above! I had them going for a good 15 mins, but couldn't find any agency to report it too at all! THAT sucked more than anything.

Sounds like they just keep on rolling on. Just got the call and kept the guy talking long enough to google (which brought up this page amongst others). They must have access to phone details as they knew the street address. We only had the phone connected the other week!

When pressed he gave me a phone number, but there is a recording saying that it isn't covered be my service provider. The website looks legit, but that is obviously part of the plan. I wonder if they know they are part of the scam.

My poor Indian fellow probably should have asked if I had a Windows OS first, but that made it a little easier to keep him going to try and work out if they would be traceable. Seems like a waste of time but the best fun I have had since I argued that I didn't want dirty electricity coming down my power lines if I signed up for green energy and they would have to put in a new power line to make sure. I kept that guy from annoying others for nearly 45 minutes!

how do we stop these slimey thieves? I , for one, am sick of receiving calls from them saying they are from this or that company(all bogus of course). I have tried all manner of approaches to stop them....on the do not call register (really am), hung up on them, put the phone down and walked away for hours, listened to them and asked all sorts of questions until they hang up. But today I lost it and screamed at them told them they had no right calling me, they were running a scam and I was sick of them calling me and not to call me again, i really screamed at him even then he tried to keep talking at me...when will they give up.....oh how I wish I had their private numbers so I could call them when I felt like it, wonder how they would feel...and i am going to get myself a whistle, they are already deaf, they do not hear what you tell them

I got two of these calls tonight, they even gave me a number to call back when i said i am not going to download anything on to my computer when i dont know who i am really talking to, he gave me a 02 number ( 0280060604)to call back to, obviously i didnt call back, but it shows they are now having a number to call, I live in the 07 area, probably bouncing back a number in India, they were all indian accents that were talking to me,( I feel sorry for the elderly, they will probably be taken in on this as it does sound legitimate), i thought i would google it, and up comes this note about the scam, if they ring back i will keep them holding on for as long as i can, bastards

You are not alone. Eventvwr scam now also in Denmark!

This morning I got a call just as described by all of you guys above from a "Mark Harrison", senior technician "at Windows".

I live in Denmark and had not heard of this scam before, but I definitely smelled a rat. While Mark was guiding me through the motions to the eventvwr, I searched the net and found this page, which confirmed my suspicion. When I told him that I was not going to log on to the suggested www.fastsupport.com site and download anything onto my PC, the line went silent and was eventually interrupted!

The plague is spreading. I hope this page will be found by a lot of people before "Mark" and his fellow fleas get away with it. Unfortunately a lot of inexperienced PC users will probably be fooled.

I am living in Scotland, UK and i just got a call from these people asking me to open up 'event viewer' ...I eventually hung up on them but the woman was so insistent that unless i did what she said my computer could crash irreparably any day now. From the above comments it seemed more wide spread in Australia but that some people were seeing it in other countries too. Was concerned to see that i think i may be one of the first to comment from Scotland or the UK. Hope this problem gets dealt with before it become world wide! Its extremely worrying as it seems like the kind of scam a lot of people might actually fall for!

These calls started last weekend, three tonight. I didn't believe them and checked with internal support at work who confimed that it was rubbish. When I challenged them tonight they gave me a local number (NSW) 02 800 50 590 to ring back on to confirm that they were genuine, I won't be wasting the price of a phone call. Its ridiculous that this has been going on for months, isn't about time diplomatic pressure was applied to the India government, not just from Australia but UK, USA, Canada, etc. in a concerted effort to get them to stop.

I've received the standard call with request to allow access to my computer. Being curious (and more than a little stupid) I granted access. Someone named 'james anderson' connected to my computer, activated my paypal internet link and asked me to authorise payment for a 'windows software warranty'. The email address for payment was sunil_125@hotmail.com. At that point I decided to end it all, disconnected the links, closed the computer and restarted it. The james anderson linked restarted and I had to manually end it. Now I have my Windows security essentials doing a full scan of the computer to make sure nothing malicious has been downloaded to it.
And I thought I was 'computer savvy'!!

Microsoft should just pony up some money to do an Advertising campaign on Australian Commercial television and in newspapers/ magazines.

Make it into a Community service announcement, keep it light but get the message out that MS dont monitor your systems for problems, dont have your contact details and if someone you dont know contacts you out of the blue claiming to be responding to a problem on your computer the only correct response is to "NOT hangup, put the phone down, leave them on the line and go do something else"

Hi. I'm in rural Australia. Just had a call from swappcc care claiming to be my Microsoft Windows Support Provider. She, with an Indian accent, told me my computer was infected with multiple viruses. I told her I have virus protection. She said these viruses cannot be detected by protection programs. She asked me to press windows + R. and Run eventvwr. She said my name and address had been provided to them by Microsoft. I wished I asked her to tell me my name & address so I could have had a laugh. I googled "eventvwr" and pages about the scam came up. I then said my employer provides computer assistance. She rather promptly hung up on me.

Thank goodness for google! Got a call a few minutes ago from an East Indian woman claiming she was from computer tech support or some BS.. I actually wasn't sure for a while that it was a scam because I couldn't really understand her and it was noisy in her background. This was obviously a warning sign!
WHen she went on about the virus my computer was spreading I questioned her about the fact that we have TWO anti-virus programs on our comp. She tried to confuse me by naming other harmful files which my e-mail was sending and apparently THESE we were what she was referring to.
WHen she asked me to type in EVENTVWR in my run box I told her I had to put my phone down to do so as I don't have a cordless.. I googled it and sure enough.. scam.
Went back to the phone, told her I don't appreciate being scammed, don't call back and hung up.
WHat jerks.

I received a phone call last night from India, it was hard to hear the woman properly, but she was claiming she was from Microsoft tech support and that my pc has been receiving warnings from Microsoft. She got me to view the event viewer to see that Microsoft actually had warnings in there, (This supposedly is how they try to prove they are legitimate.. it is very convincing.. I never even knew I had an event viewer) then said if I would open the run command box and type in *couldn't hear what she said here* she would then put me intouch with one of their acredited technicians in the "35 Tech support department" My partner got a little suspicious and got me to ask for her phone number, which she gave as 756414736, I didn't hear her name. Once I refused to type in the command run box, and questioned how I was supposed to know if she was a genuine microsoft employee and this was a genuine call, she hung up.
I am worried because I had a virus not long ago, and they sounded pretty legitimate.. I know they are really going to fool alot of people, nearly fooled me. I never typed in the run command, rung microsoft and reported this and now realise Microsoft never solicite calls to anyone over computer problems. My advice.. Hang up on all of them.

I got a call from these fools last night. Stupid morons. I live in zimbabwe where there are no credit cards or on line banking. But i could spit i am so mad!

I receive these phone calls at least twice a month. I argue with them regularly. I have told them the last three times that I don't use a Windows Operating System. I often ask them questions that they can't answer... However, the calls are very irritating and no amount of rudeness seems to get rid of them.

I downloaded an upgrade for my nokia phone and then my computer started to play up and would not boot properly only coming good after a few times of restarting. so I took out the nokia and all of a sudden I had a phone call from these gicks saying they were ringing from Microsoft technical help and noticed I had problems with my computer. because I thought they were genuine microsoft guys picking up the virus I let them take over the computer to look in to my event viewer and because there was all those red error messages there I nearly paid them to fix up but realised they were a scam when they crapped on that they could speed up my computer. wanted $350 dollars for renewal of my subscription which had lapsed with microsoft. I normally would have hung up when I hear an indian on the phone but because my computer had started to crash I though thye were genuine. Anyway I hung up when I realised they were probably responsible for crashing my computer anyway. changed all my pass words etc.

Greetings from Canada. I just hung up after talking to a man with an Indian accent who was traying to convince me that any messages in my Event Viewer other than "information" were troublesome. While on the phone, I found this article. Glad to hear a lot of you are having some fun with this.

When asked what anti-virus software I was using, I told him that I wrote the anti-virus software!

If they call again, I'll see if they can help me with my modem, or my teletype system, or my trackball, or something else that I don't have! :)

The scam has hit the US, I got a call tonight and fortunately was suspeicious. The call was from a number with an area code in Seattle, Washington USA, I suppose to look more legitamate. Thank you for your website!

Out of interest. When they use the '123 logmein' to get access to your computer - are the two comptuers connected both ways and can a virus be sent from us to them during the connection?

I have just written an e-mail to the Indian High Commission in the UK to ask what the Indian Government is doing about this. I suggest that everyone else also writes to or calls the Indian Government or their Embassy every time they receive a scam call, so that they eventually have to act.

I requested that they let me into their computer first ... they said this is not possible I asked for a supervisor to allow me access into their system to have a bit of a look around first.

I then asked Mr Indian Man who would not name the company he worked for whether he would let a complete stranger access his system - smart boy said "Yes" .... I highly doubt that

After about 20 min old mate hung up on me ... this seems to be a call i get every couple of weeks - it is so much fun playing with them and keeping them on the line - should make a list of games to play with them

Seems they are at it again here in the US. I was 99% sure this was a scam. Once i Googled eventvwr this thread came up. I hung up on the guy. If they call back, I like the blast the horn idea.

I am in Nevada, USA, and just got a similar call today.
An Asian/Indian/whatever guy called and claimed to be from a company called "Creative Solutions." He said they provide service for all Windows users. He told me that for the last 2.5 weeks they had been getting reports (supposedly from my computer every time I went online) of junk and malware being downloaded without my knowledge. Yeah, right. He told me I could Google the company name, which he claimed would prove they were legit. He also gave me a phone number I could call him back at: 403-456-3966. He kept asking for me to go to my computer, so he could walk me through something, but I just kept screwing with him. The computer I have Windows on hasn't been online for over 2 months. When I pressed him for the exact dates they received the reports, he hung up. A Google search of the company name turned up nothing (big surprise!) and a search on the phone number came up with reports of a scam. He had my name and address, which he probably got from the phone book and I imagine it was a calculated guess (or it's on the Internet somewhere) that I have a PC.

In my opinion you are not correct. I can defend the position.

This scam been i Sweden a while.

My first calls Nov/Dec 2011,
and again today March 2012 where they politely were informed that I own a Mac :)

I HAVE BEEN SCAMMED. BY A INDIAN LADY LAST MONTH CLAIMING SHE IS FROM MICROSOFT I FELL FOR IT ANED FOLLOWED THE INSTRUCTIONS FROM STEP ONE REAL DUMB HUH I WAS HAVING REAL BAD PROBLEMS FROM MY COMPUTER AND I ACTUALLY THOUGHT THEY WERE TRYING TO HELP. I HAVE RECOVERED TOSSED OUT THAT COMPUTER AT THE DUMP. AND GOT A NEW I PAD AND A MAC COMPUTER. [ :

बेवकूफ बेवकूफ तुम अमेरिकियों को नहीं पता है कि यह एक घोटाले जब यह तुम चेहरे में हिट नहीं है. hahahaha

Every couple of days 630-288-1777 calls me (on my cell phone). Google says many other people have identified this as Comcast, but usually when I answer and say hello, they just hang up.

So tonight they called again and I screamed "HELLO!? HELLO!?" to trip whatever "detection" software you guys have in place and I was put through to some kid.

He identified himself as being from Comcast and got my name wrong, and I began to say "listen, you guys keep calling me..." but before I even finished the sentence they hung up.

W-T-F is this? Can I be taken off the proverbial list here, please? i am kinda creeped, what do these people do for a living?

i heard what you said and i know what you said you guys are scam artist( oma and अज्ञात) i would know what a scam is if it hit me in the face everybody but it is impossible OMA. भाड़ में जाओ तुम लोग फोन बंद मुझे telemarketers nobody like your scams अज्ञात= unkown.

i recieved a all awhile ago...
she say my computer will crash down if i dont listen to her...
i recieve this call alot of times... as she asked me to run "eventvwr"

then when i saided you had called alot of times asking me to run eventvwr she hunged up...

The scam has matured and now it directs you to certificate manager and a Microsoft certificate that has expired in 2002. They tell how your computer needs a new certificate otherwise it will shut down and the certificate will cost you...

Would someone tell me what is happening here, and what can be done about it? I got a call from 000-000-0000. It rang just maybe three times ... but when i picked up nobody answered but there was some wierd typing and beeping noises like somebody was sending a fax to my phone... wtf is this.it took 5 minutes for sombody to answer. it was a indian accented woman she then said nobody cares and hung up... what kinda CRAP IS THAT. where is this witch calling from india what buissness does she have to call me. and thats one odd number to be calling from im gonna look it up.

I kept getting calls from them and decided to have some fun with them: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAN0K_BUIzo

Kept them on the phone 75 minutes the other night after weeks of daily calls. At first I politely (Canadian, after all) thanked them and told them I would call my geek. Then I told them there was a mistake, but thanks for calling again. Was bored the other day, so let them talk. Asked enough questions to get two different accented men yelling at me! I asked first, did they want to sell me something. They said 'no' for 65 of those 75 minutes!
What a horrible life they lead that this is their job.

Man keeps calling said I have won $340,000.00.

I need to send a cashiers check for $250.00 then they will send me the money. I keep telling him to stop calling I am not interested but he continues to call.

Told me to GO F**K my self today…..this need to stop

He calls starting at 7 am, this started 2/1/12. He has called on 2/1. 2/7. 2/10. 2/11. 2/14. daily Calls from the following numbers:

876-448-8415, 876-859-1769, 876-289-8802,876-447-7802 ,875-846-4415 they say its from jamaica and if you call them back it hell raises your phone bill and they might get thier cut.

the last call came in at 2:52 pm today 4/6/12. I have reported this to the do not call list. They also call from blocked phone numbers. This needs to stop, can you help?

Got the same call and looked it up to find they are running their SCAM out of Jamaica, sad day and age and hope these people are found and punished with a life of prison. I had already seen a show on TV showing these parasites where they went to the house they were making calls from. Of course such is the case with most parasites, they turned into the cowards they are when confronted face to face and ran like a bunch of low-life cocroaches back under the rocks.

i received these calls last year and forwarded a recording to accc scam watch.

these morons called the wrong number to scam . i'm a self employed network engineer lol

fools....

As soon as they say that they are from "Microsoft..."
Just say "Sorry not interested, bye"

Also couldn't microsoft add a message to the top of the event viewer that says "This is not a Virus log"

I received one such call today (24 Apr) about 1pm. The conversation was started off by an Indian girl and the call would be transfered to a few other indian men claiming to be technical personnels. They 1st did the Eventviewer routine and then directed me this website (http://www.ammyy.com/en/index.html) and told me to download and install the remote access application. Using this application, which grant them access to my PC, they did the Eventviewer routine again, this time through remote access, to impress upon me that there is a serious problem with my PC. Then they directed me to this website (http://www.teche4pc.com/serviceplans.html) and told me to buy the most expensive service on offer. Fortunately, I did not reveal any credit card details as I already had a suspicion from the start.

þetta fólk kalla húsið okkar meira en nóg og þeir kalla að minnsta kosti 8 sinnum á dag og 1000 sinnum á mánuði þetta er glæpur sem ég er að fara að hafa samband við yfirvöld láta þá reikna það út eða ég er bara að fara að byrja bölvun á þá sem alltaf kemur fyrst upp í hugan.Asna cuss mig út í hindí og ég uppgötva það að það að fara að fá eyra fullt.Ég að halda að fá þessa símtölum og fólk á hinum enda línuna getur varla talað ensku. Það er augljóst að þeir eru ekki notuð til að vinna í símaver eða vita neitt um tölvur. Þeir sennilega veit ekki þeir eru dupes og eru einfaldlega að gera það sem þeir hafa verið sagt að með því að alvöru conmen sem hafa undir-samningsbundinn þeim í gegnum nokkur lág-leigu félagsins. Svo er stringing þá eftir eða hróp móðgununum ekki aðeins sóun á tíma, sennilega það ekki kostað conmen eyri eða hafa áhrif á þá á nokkurn hátt. Þú ert einfaldlega upsetting einhvern sem er sennilega bara í erfiðleikum með að gera líf laun.

Jafnvel conmen heldur líklega hafa þeir einfaldlega koma upp með snjöllum hætti í flogging andstæðingur-veira hugbúnaður með hár álagningu til útlendinga sem hafa meiri peninga en vit og vilja ekki missa nokkur Bob. Þeir líklega held ekki það sem glæp og lögreglu, sammála stjórnmálamenn og eftirlitsstofnunum sennilega. Eftir allt saman, við teljum ekki að það er glæpur þegar Vesturlandabúar borga £ 70 fyrir hönnuður T-bolur þessi kostnaður 50p að gera í Bangladesh.

Eina leiðin til að stöðva þessa tegund af hlutur er fyrir Vestur stjórnvalda til að gera meira til að loka svona símtöl ... en þeir munu ekki gera það vegna þess að þingmenn og eftirlitsaðila eru dauðhræddir við upsetting fyrirtæki sem segjast búa hátækni störf á svæðum þar sem mikið atvinnuleysi með því að byggja kalla miðstöðvar pakkað með hlutastarfi lágmarks laun starfsmanna. (Aðeins í kvöld Ég las fréttatilkynningu frá bankanum sem krafist var að skapa þúsundir starfa banka, sem hljómar áhrifamikill en í raun ætlað annað símaþjónustuver).

Eina svarið sem ég get hugsað er fyrir útsending eftirlitsaðila að vera nauðsynlegt að gera TV og útvarp auglýsingum til að fræða neytendur um áhættu kalt starf svo mjög viðkvæm, svo sem lífeyrisþega, eru varaðir við því mikla fjölda óþekktarangi. Ef við getum vara fólk um drykk-akstur hvers vegna ekki Indian conmen?

אנשים רבים מקבלים שיחות עכשיו מחברות אשר בתחילה לזהות את עצמם מיקרוסופט ואמר כי הם שמו לב שיש לך בעיות עם המחשב, והם צריכים להיות קבוע מיד לפני קריסות המחשב. ברגע שאתה מתחיל לשאול אותם, הם נשמעים לו חשוד ויש תנתק אותך מיד, אבל אחרים דווקא לתת לך את שם החברה שלהם, אתר אינטרנט להתקשר שוב מספר. לקוח שלי נתן לי את המידע הזה מאחד כי נתן להם את כל פרטי אנשי הקשר שלהם נשמע לגיטימי מאוד, אבל כאשר קראתי להם לגבות את עצמי, אם כי נשמע לגיטימי מאוד, הם שינו את הסיפור פעמים רבות שלהם בזמן שהייתי בטלפון, ועשה שקרים בוטים.

כאשר קראתי את זה בחזרה חברה אחת, העמדתי פנים שאני חבר מתקשר כדי לבדוק אותם, ובסופו של דבר לקראת סוף השיחה, אמרתי שאני קורא לטכנאי והם עדיין לא הניח את השפופרת. הם קיבלו את הכדורים! הנה בעצם הבילוי שלי על שיחת הטלפון, פחות או יותר מסכם.הבחור דיברתי בטלפון בחברה זו זיהו בתחילה את עצמם מיקרוסופט, נקרא "ScamTech".

לפני שאנחנו מתחילים את הדיאלוג הזה, תן לי רק להצביע לך, כי מיקרוסופט מעולם ולעולם לא יהיה, התקשר מישהו ישירות. מישהו יכול לקרוא לך מי הוא Microsoft Certified אך שים לב, אף אחד, ואני מתכוון NoooooBoooody יוכל לומר שהם יכולים לראות שיש לך בעיות במחשב ולכן הם קוראים. וזה מה החבר 'ה האלה עושים. אם הם רואים שיש לך בעיות, זה אומר שהם כבר בעיה, כי הם פרוצים למחשב לרגל לך. אחסוך את הפרטים האחרים לך לקרוא בדיאלוג הבא:

forign is taking over the websites above

these peeple are dick heads everytime i tryed saying somthing they say you shut up i have this offer and keep on saying things about my pc i tryed to say i need off the list but he interupted me with a SHUT UP BITCH IM TRYING TO TALK! yelling down the phone at me. i said i dont want no freaking help with my dam computer and hung up.

Hello! Got a call from a company which they say phone number 315-633-3110.

I'm in Québec - Canada!

I got a similar call last night in the US. Caller ID said call was from NJ. On pressing the female caller, she claimed she was in AZ but couldn't give me a city. She passed me on to her supervisor because I couldn't seem to click the right areas after I opened "eventvwr.". Supervisor agreed that they were located in Utah when I asked him. Supervisor finally hung up after 28 minutes when I confided in him I was enjoying myself.

Just Kidding!!!!!Please Don't Do That.....But I really am Indian.....;)

Just got the same call from Indian speaking person saying she was from Windows Upgrading System. Call was from 999-910-0221 and after suspiscions of a scam, i asked if I could call them back later. They gave me the following call back number 647-288-3898. I am in the province of Quebec, Canada.

I have stupidly been a victim of this. Is there anything I can do about this now that I've become a victim of this? I am so pissed off about falling into this trap. I had no idea that something like this was happening. This really pisses me off that people can't work for a living and make their own honest living that they need to scam people out of money. I'm a single mom and I was having a lot of issues with my computer and I thought I was protecting myself. . . . I have no idea who to trust anymore.

I just got the second call of this scam here in San Jose, California. I suspected it was a scam since the guy told me my computer was sending out problems to the Internet from my Windows machine. (I use Apple.) So I kept him on the phone to figure out how the scam worked while I also did a Google search on the strings he was asking me to type.

When he asked me to read what was on my screen, I read the post of someone describing the details of the scam. He wanted to assure me it was no scam.

I kept him on the line telling him that I could not understand his poor English. He got mad at that eventually and asked if I knew other languages like maybe Spanish. I rattled off some Spanish and asked him to tell me what I said. He claimed he knew, but was under no obligation to tell me.

This went on for a half hour. I finally told him that my system was a Mac. He acted furious that I let him think I had a Windows computer.

At that point I just started mocking everything he said. After a while he gave up on me and hung up.

I had the last laugh this time.

Now I think I will implement unidentified call blocking.