Our post on the Windows phone scam continues to get a lot of hits, suggesting that the scam is still around, and fraudsters are still trying to con PC users out of money for performing largely useless tasks on their computers.
However, they recently picked on the wrong person to scam; BBC technology correspondant Rory Cellan-Jones, who played along with them for a bit, and recorded the conversation, which was played out on Today on Radio 4 (listen to the call here).
Suffice to say, when Rory revealed that he didn’t in fact own a PC, the caller got rather annoyed, and accused Rory of wasting his time, as well as (unsurprisingly) refusing to give a contact number for the firm he worked for.
The scams take on different forms, but essentially there are two flavours, which they may mix and match:
- They’ll convince you that standard error reporting on your PC is actually a virus, and get you to pay them to get rid of the errors
- Once again they’ll convince you that your PC is riddled with viruses, and will install malicious software which can steal your banking data.
A new blog has also been started which purports to be from an ex-employee of one of the companies carrying out this scam (which are often, if not always, taking place from Indian call centres).
The blog post reveals some of the tricks behind the scam, but also gives a few details on what to do if you’ve been taken in, including how to stop them connecting to your PC with the software that they’ll get you to download. Most of the software they use is actually legitimately used for IT support, including Ammyy, which itself is warning about the scams.