New scam I think
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New scam I think
This morning I received a call purportedly from 'Orange' advising me that I had a problem with my computer. The young man sounded very like the young men who have been calling us from Microsoft, again about a problem they have detected with our computer. I think it is a scam so hung up. I thought it worth mentioning to warn everyone.
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Re: New scam I think
Yes, it is a scam. In the UK they have started calling claiming to be from BT or Virgin media, it's just a new twist on the original Microsoft scam.vyvyan wrote:This morning I received a call purportedly from 'Orange' advising me that I had a problem with my computer. The young man sounded very like the young men who have been calling us from Microsoft, again about a problem they have detected with our computer. I think it is a scam so hung up. I thought it worth mentioning to warn everyone.
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- Gus Morris
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If I received a call like this I would be just a little bit concerned. You have been called on a French phone by somebody who knows you speak English. About 0.1 % of French private numbers fall into this category. A criminal gang has your phone number. They have verified it is correct. What else do they have on you? What else can they do with the information?
Does this mean you have been unlucky? Or have you failed to follow the basic rules of protecting your personal information?
Just a thought like.
Gus
Does this mean you have been unlucky? Or have you failed to follow the basic rules of protecting your personal information?
Just a thought like.
Gus
- malcolmcooper
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Please don't panic. There have been dozens upon dozens of "Daily Mail" scare stories over the years and there will be more. I have yet to hear of anyone "ACTUALLY" losing a solitary cent in any one of them.
Before I'm flamed I'm not suggesting that anyone should be complacent about their security, online or otherwise. I just think some perspective is needed. If Amazon is hacked and the hackers gain a million user postal addresses it makes a great headline...but so what?
Do please keep your privacy and virus protection up to date of course but remember, to lose a million you have to have a million, and no one has lost a cent yet.
Before I'm flamed I'm not suggesting that anyone should be complacent about their security, online or otherwise. I just think some perspective is needed. If Amazon is hacked and the hackers gain a million user postal addresses it makes a great headline...but so what?
Do please keep your privacy and virus protection up to date of course but remember, to lose a million you have to have a million, and no one has lost a cent yet.
Malcolm Cooper
I may disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
I may disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
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Malcolm are you in some sort of parallel universe, there are 1,000s of cases of people ACTUALLY losing a lot of cents.malcolmcooper wrote:Please don't panic. There have been dozens upon dozens of "Daily Mail" scare stories over the years and there will be more. I have yet to hear of anyone "ACTUALLY" losing a solitary cent in any one of them.
Before I'm flamed I'm not suggesting that anyone should be complacent about their security, online or otherwise. I just think some perspective is needed. If Amazon is hacked and the hackers gain a million user postal addresses it makes a great headline...but so what?
Do please keep your privacy and virus protection up to date of course but remember, to lose a million you have to have a million, and no one has lost a cent yet.
Scams play on people's naivety or sometimes on their greed and it is incumbent on us all to be careful.
As for 'how do they get the numbers? Not all databases are stolen, you can buy databases of virtually anything nowadays, be assured that most insurance companies and publications will happily sell lists of their customers/subscribers
Last edited by Allan on Tue 18 Aug 2015 23:00, edited 1 time in total.
- malcolmcooper
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http://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/news/237 ... -report-itmalcolmcooper wrote:Details please. I'm delighted to be proved wrong.Malcolm are you in some sort of parallel universe, there are 1,000s of cases of people ACTUALLY losing a lot of cents.
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- Gus Morris
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Sure - until it happens to you! In my immediate circle we have been subjected to the following:-malcolmcooper wrote:Paranoia
Burglary of a residence secondaire identified as empty via the French phone book
Theft of the customer database by a disgruntled ex-employee
Full identity theft. Included being harassed by baliffs for debts contracted by the criminal.
It was an absolute nightmare for the target and his family.
Theft of all the computers from rented office space. Fortunately all data was stored remotely.
Some of this could have been avoided. All of it was real.
Gus
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Or just get back to the phone scams. No survey data about who has lost what is going to be worth much. But look at it from the other end: there must be many, many people making these calls, and they do not live on air, even in India.
I do not live glued to a phone, and I have never given any of them reason to believe I am a sucker, but still the calls come. I am reasonably clued-up about how IT works, and still have most of my marbles. But I can very well see how a small-but-profitable percentage of the punters fall for them. And both my knowledge and my marbles are very much wasting assets at this stage of my life.
I do not live glued to a phone, and I have never given any of them reason to believe I am a sucker, but still the calls come. I am reasonably clued-up about how IT works, and still have most of my marbles. But I can very well see how a small-but-profitable percentage of the punters fall for them. And both my knowledge and my marbles are very much wasting assets at this stage of my life.
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I didn't understand Owens88' post eitherSmiley G wrote:Did an Internet Bot write this post?Owens88 wrote:If you have a computer then the likelihood is that you have a computer problem.
What is the likelihood of an 'expert' solving it? Never mind some randomer who just rang you without credentials.
- lonesome paddy
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I reckon the word "if" might be missing from the post.Owens88 wrote:If you have a computer then the likelihood is that you have a computer problem.
What is the likelihood of an 'expert' solving it? Never mind some randomer who just rang you without credentials.
If you have a computer then the likelihood is that (if) you have a computer problem, what is the etc etc
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Surely not. Owens88 has rightly identified how this sort of "social engineering" works. Computers often don't work as well as you might want (especially Windows machines, without being unduly partisan), and many/most users have little idea why or what do do about it. They are correspondingly susceptible to scams.lonesome paddy wrote:I reckon the word "if" might be missing from the post.Owens88 wrote:If you have a computer then the likelihood is that you have a computer problem.
What is the likelihood of an 'expert' solving it? Never mind some randomer who just rang you without credentials.
If you have a computer then the likelihood is that (if) you have a computer problem, what is the etc etc
I part company with him over his implied contempt for people who accept that random callers can improve things. Windows asks you to give them data to improve your user experience; it pops up quite often with problems, and sometimes solutions, to problems you mostly hadn't noticed. What is more natural, the user "lamda" might think, that they ring you up if they identify a really serious (and expensive) problem?
The people who fall for this stuff are mostly not idiots but just out of their comfort zone. And how could they not be? That is why the scams are so cute (though also evil, obviously).
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But who would you ask, and how complete a response could you ever expect to get? A lot of people probably don't know they have been scammed, a lot more probably write it down to experience, and an awful lot, I suspect, are ashamed to say that they have been taken for a sucker.Davidsimon wrote:There is a lot of it about,and as you say, when you ask for actual examples of people losing money..........malcolmcooper wrote:Paranoia
The one indisputable fact is that many of these calls are made and (after quite a few years now) they cannot all be done just for fun.
The "paranoia" response seems to me a coded way of saying "I am too clued up to fall for anything like this, and so are all my friends". Which may be true, but I prefer to keep an open mind about my own fallibility.
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Sorry. I was in Maths teacher mode working on probability.
* Almost every computer has a problem, even when new. They may not be causing you concern yet but they are there.
* Some problems are difficult to solve even by the experts who know your machine. What are the odds of a stranger calling you out of the blue being able to solve your problem?
I am not implying contempt for people who have actually fallen for the scam but I am saying that everybody should think seriously before they invite strangers into their house, their purse and their bank accounts, because that is what our computers are.
Is that clearer?
* Almost every computer has a problem, even when new. They may not be causing you concern yet but they are there.
* Some problems are difficult to solve even by the experts who know your machine. What are the odds of a stranger calling you out of the blue being able to solve your problem?
I am not implying contempt for people who have actually fallen for the scam but I am saying that everybody should think seriously before they invite strangers into their house, their purse and their bank accounts, because that is what our computers are.
Is that clearer?
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The same goes for the "Partenaires de EDF" who offer free energy surveys but want to sell you solar panels, double glazing, etc., at inflated prices.Owens88 wrote: everybody should think seriously before they invite strangers into their house, their purse and their bank accounts, because that is what our computers are.
Russell.
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[quote="Owens88"]Sorry. I was in Maths teacher mode working on probability.
* Almost every computer has a problem, even when new. They may not be causing you concern yet but they are there.
* Some problems are difficult to solve even by the experts who know your machine. What are the odds of a stranger calling you out of the blue being able to solve your problem?
I am not implying contempt for people who have actually fallen for the scam but I am saying that everybody should think seriously before they invite strangers into their house, their purse and their bank accounts, because that is what our computers are.
Is that clearer?[/quote
It was never unclear. The first part seemed entirely astute: home computers are usually running less well than they might, and even if they are not, they often run less well than we hoped they might. So we are all receptive to the idea that their performance might be improved.
But the second bit seems a bit black-and-white (perhaps the inner maths teacher again). Very few of us have much insight into what problems really exist, and which of them (if genuine) might be resolved over the phone. And the people who phone you are not doing so "out of the blue": they are doing so under the authority of Microsoft, or Orange, or whoever. All firms who have trained us to think that they want to, and can, help us even at long distance.
So the moral, obviously, is much the same: trust nobody. I would only add, trust nobody, even if you're a maths teacher. You may be more vulnerable than it is comfortable to think.
* Almost every computer has a problem, even when new. They may not be causing you concern yet but they are there.
* Some problems are difficult to solve even by the experts who know your machine. What are the odds of a stranger calling you out of the blue being able to solve your problem?
I am not implying contempt for people who have actually fallen for the scam but I am saying that everybody should think seriously before they invite strangers into their house, their purse and their bank accounts, because that is what our computers are.
Is that clearer?[/quote
It was never unclear. The first part seemed entirely astute: home computers are usually running less well than they might, and even if they are not, they often run less well than we hoped they might. So we are all receptive to the idea that their performance might be improved.
But the second bit seems a bit black-and-white (perhaps the inner maths teacher again). Very few of us have much insight into what problems really exist, and which of them (if genuine) might be resolved over the phone. And the people who phone you are not doing so "out of the blue": they are doing so under the authority of Microsoft, or Orange, or whoever. All firms who have trained us to think that they want to, and can, help us even at long distance.
So the moral, obviously, is much the same: trust nobody. I would only add, trust nobody, even if you're a maths teacher. You may be more vulnerable than it is comfortable to think.
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Believe it or not, a lot of these scam calls were 'sort of' genuine.
My business in the UK is based on a partnership with Microsoft. One of their largest partners in India had their contract torn up because they were drumming up business calling people and quite genuinely looking at their computers remotely. They then charged them for the service and of course they had no way of knowing whether or not there was anything wrong in the first place.
I regularly get calls of this nature and normally just tell them to f*#k off but the other day I had one from a woman and bizarrely I felt the need to be polite. Strange...
My business in the UK is based on a partnership with Microsoft. One of their largest partners in India had their contract torn up because they were drumming up business calling people and quite genuinely looking at their computers remotely. They then charged them for the service and of course they had no way of knowing whether or not there was anything wrong in the first place.
I regularly get calls of this nature and normally just tell them to f*#k off but the other day I had one from a woman and bizarrely I felt the need to be polite. Strange...