Put a Sock On It

We had a day off today, together so we've probably spent more time together today than we have across the whole of the last 2 weeks combined. We got some useful jobs done and have relaxed as well. Annie's car has an MOT and we even went out for lunch!

This sock-foundling was sitting all lonely on a railing as we walked back to the car. I wonder where its friend is?

We got called in the afternoon by the "Microsoft Technical Support Services", reporting a problem with our computer. Apparently errors were being sent from it and logged by Microsoft's central servers.

Fortunately, I (Annie) know a thing or two about computers, and I know that this is a SCAM.

As I had time this afternoon, I played one of our favourite games: "See how long you can keep these con artists on the phone, because while they're tied up with you, they're not succesfully extorting money out of anyone else. I managed 23 minutes today - not too shabby. I want to make sure as many people as possible are wise to this scam, so they don't fall for it.

The essence of the scam is this: They want to scare you into giving them control of your computer. They will pretend to diagnose your computer, often showing you genuine errors (once they have control) - but which you'd know are not errors caused by viruses if you knew computers well. Once scared, they may ask you for a subcription for a piece of software to protect your machine - and for this money you may get a virus protector (unlikely), or nothing at all, or they may download a virus to your machine to keep control of it afterwards. They may also use your credit card details (or information found on your computer) to steal your identity or make further unauthorised charges to you. Although they sound like a genuine call centre, and the telephone operators may not know the full intent of the scam, they work for really not nice people.

I was asked to go to my computer as it was sending out errors as we spoke on the phone. I was understandably (but fakely) worried about that - and rushed to my computer to help them diagnose what was wrong. I did let them know we lived in a (fake) totally enormous house, so it took me a couple of minutes to (fake) get there. Once on the computer, I was asked to start a browser and go to Google. I wasted a few more minutes not really knowing how to do this. And so on... In the end we got to the bit where they wanted to be able to install the remote control software on my machine (up to this point all the computer interaction had only been in my head - I was still comfy on the sofa...). It was going to be hard to fake that bit - so I said "oh, it's come up with an error - that's probably what you're talking about, isn't it? It says server can't be reached - is that bad?". So my (fake) Internet connection had gone down. I dutifully rebooted my (fake) machine (in my head), and waited for the screen with the icons ("are those the little picture things?" to return). I also went to peer at the lights on my (fake) router. No luck - the (imaginary) Internet problem persisted.

At this point I was passed to a more techy person to help me - I was clearly keen to give them money, but it would be tricky to do so without an Internet connection. Worth the big guns.

During the attempt to get me to reboot the router ("I'm not sure how to do that - do I just unplug it from the wall?"), the phone line dropped a couple of times. I asked where he was phoning from, and was surprised to hear it was the "London office". Odd, given our caller ID had said "International", but I told him it must be all the snow we were having at the moment disrupting all the phone lines. He agreed.

Even he was getting stumped by now - "Are you using Wifi on your laptop madam?" - "Erm, is that the no-cabley magic way of getting the Internet? If so, yes.". Being unable to get the (imaginary) Internet restarted, he advised me to call my Internet Service Provider, and he'd phone back in 10 minutes once it was working. I was getting tired by now (and it was hard to hide the giggling coming from Chris in the background), so I told him ("Oh gosh - look at the time!") I needed to go and pick up the kids from swimming and that I'd get the nice man from next door ("who knows about this sort of stuff") to come and take a look. We parted amicably - far more amicably than usual, as I often ask them if they are ok with causing misery to people as they extort money from them.

I hope - if anyone has made it this far - that I've intercepted someone who might have otherwise been caught out. Please do let people know - this is a common scam. You can read more about other people who've taken the time to play along with them here.