Phone scam making rounds in EDC
The El Dorado County Sheriff’s Office has received reports of people receiving a telephone call from someone identifying themselves as a computer technician working for a reputable computer company such as Dell. The caller tells the victim they are certified to work on Microsoft products and they received warning messages from the victim’s computer that it is vulnerable and they called to fix the problem.
Officials are warning people this is a scam. Microsoft or their partners do not make unsolicited phone calls, often referred to as cold calls, about your computer’s security or software.
Cyber criminals may ask you to go to a legitimate website and install software which will allow them to access your computer remotely in order to fix it. Once you do this, your computer and personal information is vulnerable.
If you receive a phone call like this, hang-up and refuse to become a victim.
Usually, if you pick up a land-line phone, there is seemingly no one on the other end…for several seconds…well, that is a first clue for you to hang-up.
The second clue comes after you say, typically…HELLO…..HELLo…..HELLO. THEY are waiting for clues that YOUR phone number is a good working one. NOW,
someone, usually with a heavy accent (as from, often, India)…announces that they are from Microsoft (or some division of Microsoft), and that they have identified a problem with your Windows computer. HANG UP…but, your number is already recorded by them as a good working number…you will get future calls, count on it. Next time, be smarter. HANG UP if no one answers to your HELLO. IMMEDIATELY.
These robot calls, which transfer to a human, have been going on for YEARS. Long ago I found it impossible to get a caller’s number from them, in order to report them, and that is a waste of time anyway, if you do get the number, which is usually phony.
Just hang-up, and best to hang up BEFORE their human answers, as many of these calls come from massive call-centers where an ANSWER by you (you usually have to wait a few seconds for a human answerer) gets automatically recorded as a GOOD WORKING PHONE NUMBER.
Yes, its a scam, yes the phone call is illegal in a couple of ways, yes, there is a substantial fine (which YOU get to keep, but you need identification information)…but you won’t find the source, nor in this Country (USUALLY) for that ID information. HANG UP. If you have an answering machine, 99% of the time they won’t leave a message. If you request their number, again, a waste of time, you won’t get one. HANG UP!…as soon as you see that there is no one answering your HELLO!…
Always good advice, Bob. However, if you want to eat up their phone time tell them you need to boot your computer up and then just set the phone down and walk away. Or, if you’re bored and need a laugh, play dumb and make them so frustrated that THEY hang up.
I have an additional service through Microsoft but when I received the call I played it safe and told the individual that I was busy and to give me a number to call back. Of course they gave me a number. I then tossed that number aside and called what I knew to be Microsoft’s number. They told me that if they were to call the technician would identify the problem with a CASE NUMBER right off the bat which you would have seen on your computer. Play it smart for any calls:
1. Ask for the company’s number and hang up.
2. Find the real number to the company and call it.
I got one of these calls. When
I said “oh, no!! Do you need my credit card number? My SSN? My firstborn as collateral????!!!!!”, they promptly hung up on me
Phone scams are everywhere! We get people calling here claiming they’re from Microsoft and they can speed up our internet. I recently got a call from someone claiming to be my grandson (I don’t have a grandson by the way) and he wanted money via credit card, from me, to bail him out of jail for a dui.
So be very cautious about who calls asking for money.
Be safe and be smart, OLS
This thread should be combined with the one about the Barton system doing unsolicited 25 minute phone health surveys.
We have been recieving calls like these for several years. They seem to come in bursts and at first I would just hang up but now I do a bit of gorilla phone fun by waisting their time. Sometimes I do like the blogger above that just sets the phone down and walks away, sometimes I tell them I need them to call me back at the phone by my computer and I give them the phone number of the local police. Sometimes I put the phone by the toilet and flush, sometimes I blast a blow horn into the receiver. If they are dumb enough to keep calling im gonna make it fun…