Scam
 

I have just had a telephone call that was allegedly from Microsoft. I answered in Spanish, she was thrown for a second then she spoke in English (really difficult to understand her due to her heavy Indian accent). She said that she was from Microsoft and that she was concerned about my computer, I asked why and she said something totally unintelligible so I closed the call. My phone rang again but I did not answer. My assumption is that this is yet another scam so thought that I would mention it on here to inform people.

Rosemary

Re: Scam
 

Whenever I get a dodgy phone call I inform them that they should speak to my farther and if they hang on I will go and get him.
Then I put the phone down and leave it for 15 minutes or so hopefully wasting a fair chunk of their time which is the only commodity they have.

Re: Scam
 

I had a several similar calls from "Microsoft" when we still lived in the UK. They usually try to frighten you by saying they have detected that you have some viruses on your computer and try to sell you some antivirus software. Always a scam but some people obviously pay!

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Worse still , some suggest that they have remote access to your computer to 'fix' things, needless to say, don't do it. Just put them off by saying yours is a Mac.

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I always reply when i get a call with indian accent here...yes please and 2 poppams with chuckney..never last more than 3 secs

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This....never allow anyone have remote access to your computer, they could steal all your passwords, banking details etc.....pull the plug out quickly.

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Had a male today, when he started to speak I asked him to wait a minute (in Spanish because he spoke in English) and then I left the phone on a chair whilst I continued with what I was doing when he called. After about 3 minutes I picked up the phone but he had gone. The phone rang 4 times after that so I did not bother to answer. So disruptive.

Rosemary

Re: Scam
 

I once put my 3 year old grandaughter on the phone to one of these cold-callers,it was hilarious because he kept asking for her daddy and she kept saying are you my daddy. He was the one to hang up-eventually and in a very bad mood.

Re: Scam
 

Love that. Pity that my call had not come earlier when I had a house full of Spanish children. Probably would not have heard the phone ring so would not have been able to use your trick.

Rosemary

Re: Scam
 

Had an email.'re your invoice for ( I can't remember the company) £49.00, should you wish to cancel this, please go to our cancellation page.
Purporting to come from PayPal.
It all looks cosher until common sense kicks in.
As for the Crown Jewels of Nigeria....

Re: Scam
 

Last year in the UK I was caught by a TalkTalk scam.
It actually seemed legit at the time. Goes something like this...

New broadband install, but had a problem with the wiring to the house.

BT (Openreach) engineer came and fixed it. He ran tests on the router and noted that some failed (broadband was however working ok). It looked like he passed this info back to TalkTalk remotely (via his tablet) - an important point I think.

Later that day, had phone call from TalkTalk (they said) to 'investigate my faulty router'. I'm ashamed to say that I was not suspicious at this stage because of the earlier BT visit.

Yes, I allowed access to my PC!!! but became alarmed when I saw some weird messages on the screen. I then shut my PC down and hung up.

When I went to use my PC a few hours later, I was locked out and saw a ransom message.

Fortunately I had backed up my data a few days previous (Win 10 upgrade), so I simply did a clean re-install of Windows.

A coincidence? Data compromise by BT? Data compromise by TalkTalk? or a crooked BT Engineer (unlikely I think).

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You like to think the best of others clearly. BT staff have less than a clean bill of health when it come to honesty, much like many a large institution.

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I love winding them up. I work in IT, we once let these jokers into a test machine but blocked their ability to save any files on it, they kept trying stuff for about half an hour. We eventually removed the restriction, they downloaded their virus, but firstly it was a mac that didnt run their junk, and 2nd macafee anti virus saw and blocked our attempt to run it. The moment when we told them it was a mac after 30 mins got a stifled eureka moment from them, we really tried to help them but the force of their tech was weak...

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Had a male today,

That's interesting!

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I used to ask them what my IP address was. If they can see I had problems then they must have my IP address in order to see my PC . CLICK! Did once, when a bit bored, egg them on. Asked for their email address to send them a password to get into my computer remotely,(not allowed to give it out!!) could not find the windows error log they referred to,how could a virus get past my antivirus program etc. After about 40 minutes asked if the fact that I had a Mac made a difference. CLICK! But I had enjoyed myself at their expense!My friend, who is a microsoft certified engineeer once kept one of them going for over an hour.

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Hi Rosemary, I'm staggered as it appears you have only just had one of these calls are not read about them! We've been getting them for about the last two years. Sometimes they say they are calling from Windows, not Microsoft. The fact that as far as I know there is no company called Windows is a bit of a giveaway also.

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I've never yet had such a call and we have a few windows PC's in the house and have been in Spain for 11 years now.

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So that has damned all BT staff....amazing

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I have a recording which i put the receiver near..lots of info...passwords...user names..date of purchase..but i confess one of my dogs had a very bad stomach..nasty noises:blah:

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Hoho. My ip telephony provider has a virtual extn no to transfer telemarketing calls to, it says something like 'thank you for contacting us, you are in a q and we will talk to you as soon as we can [10 sec delay] [this is point 1]. unfortunately we are so busy answering telemarketers that thiss queue is at least ZZZzzz minutes long, in the meantime here is some nice music [horrible music fir 5 mins - loop to 1...]

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You would have all laughed at me a moment ago because the phone rang, I did not look to see the number but presumed that it was them again so answered in a very stern annoyed voice. Unfortunately it was not the pests but one of the lovely Spanish ladies who ring me every week, talk about egg on face. Even though I immediately changed to my normal friendly voice she was reluctant to speak.

Rosemary

Re: Scam
 

As I comment re' Rosemary's post we have had these quite frequently over the years, however over the last few days we have had between 15 - 20 of these calls each day. Thinking of cancelling my land line with Telitec as this is getting ridiculous. A few years back I was at my son's house in the UK and asked him why they never answered their home phone. He said because of all the marketing calls they just let all calls go to their answering machine and then decide phone back later if the call is valid.
Other than cancelling my line I can only think some form of screening method is necessary.
Anyone any ideas as it's getting out of hand. Calls start early in the morning.
Thanks.

Re: Scam
 

We drooped landlines years ago, just stick to mobiles. You can avoid some in the uk by using the govt tps service, but it doesnt stop the calls from abroad.

You can have fun however - remember they use what is effectively a script. There is something called the anti telemarketing script you can use t ototally baffle them.

Short of screening all calls, you cant stop it, only make it more expensive [mobile] or time wasting for them.

One other thing - i worked for a huge company run by a mouse once... I was someone who bought a lot of stuff. To prevent harassment by sales people, our phones had 2 numbers, the external one forwarded to a minion in hr whose job was to shield us - our names were considered secrets, never given to anyone external. Imgine the conversation - i want to speak to the head of IT, sorry he wont talk to you, whats his name, sorry we cant give that out, well how can i sell him things, you cant he'll call you if he wants to... In another co, we had premium rate nos, it was fine for a salesman to call me anytime, it cost him 3 quid a minute...

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At the mouse, we had suppliers so frustrated, that one computer manufacturer signed a 12 month deal to sell us desktops laptops etc at an audited -1% profit [ie 1% loss, audited by our rottweiler auditors] globally, just so their sales peole could have contact with the national managers and hopefully build up a relationship :-)

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Thanks for that, thinking of just confining to mobiles only as both my son & daughter in the UK do. At first we used to wind the callers up a bit. A couple of days ago, the phone went as we were on our way out. I went along with them and asked them could they wait whilst I turned on my PC. They said yes, so I just put the phone on our table and went out leaving them on the line.
Seriously though, when you have family in the UK you are reluctant not to answer the phone in case there's a problem, but the humour, if it ever was so, has now worn very thin.
If I do cancel the land line though, we must get into the habit of always having a mobile nearby and charged, something we don't do now, probably because of the land line!
:ban:

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With mobiles, the use of ip telephony in facebook messenger, whatsapp [not very good imho] and apple facetime make call costs almost zero, you can save quite a bit. I use giffgaff when in the uk, personally 7.50 a month, you can just turn on and off prepaid arrangements at will, and of course next month those calls texts and data are same price in the entire eu.

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I'm assuming these scammers all speak English? Funny how they are calling phone numbers in Spain. I wonder how often someone answers who even speaks English.

- Eric S.

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The ones that rang me spoke in English with a very heavy Indian accent, they were slightly thrown when I answered the phone in Spanish but still continued with their "madam I am concerned about you computer" speech.

Rosemary