Hoax calls from “Microsoft”

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I don’t know whether this is a problem in the USA, but it is in the UK. Most days now I receive a phone call, asking for me by name, no caller ID other than “International”, from someone with an Indian accent, male and female, claiming to be calling from Microsoft. Sometimes it is “Microsoft Technical Service”, sometimes “Windows Registration Department”. A friend was taken in by this hoax, and persuaded to download some file that took control of her computer, which is now away being cleansed.

If you don’t have a support issue open with Microsoft, they will NEVER call you, please don’t be taken by these fraudsters.

Dell E5570 Latitude, Intel Core i5 6440@2.60 GHz, 8.00 GB - Win 10 Pro

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Who would you have given contact details to that someone has managed to nick? In fact, why would you give anyone your details?

cheers, Paul

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I don’t know whether this is a problem in the USA, but it is in the UK. Most days now I receive a phone call, asking for me by name, no caller ID other than “International”, from someone with an Indian accent, male and female, claiming to be calling from Microsoft. Sometimes it is “Microsoft Technical Service”, sometimes “Windows Registration Department”. A friend was taken in by this hoax, and persuaded to download some file that took control of her computer, which is now away being cleansed.

If you don’t have a support issue open with Microsoft, they will NEVER call you, please don’t be taken by these fraudsters.

John,
Hello, and thank you for the “Heads Up” I’m sure that this will be of help … Many “Newbies” could be “taken In ” by this.. Especially older (Me) non PC savvy people.Regards Fred

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I have had two custs in Canada in the last month taken in by these guys. They start right off with “I see you are having trouble with your computer”, which is a great line because everyone always is. Then they exude competence to such a degree they convince the user to give them remote access and install spyware.

One of my custs caught on quickly and said he was going to call his tech support guy (me) – at which point the caller just hung up. The other let them in, got rootkits on her laptop and two other computers on her network, her router reconfigured and email accounts cancelled for sending spam. Took 2 days to clean it all up.

Hard to charge enough for such wasted time.

Jock

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Very common here in BC Canada as I get the calls as do most of my contacts. Microsoft will not call you unless you previously initiated the call. Best way to handle this is to tell the Indian that “OK but my computer is very slow and takes several minutes to turn on. Do you want me to turn it on?” He will obviously ask you to do that. Then just leave the phone and carry on with your everyday routine for half an hour. If he is still online after that time tell him it is nearly there and ditto. Lester

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I live in Canada, and *twice* in a month, I was called by “Microsoft Support”, evidently from the Bangalore branch office, telling me my computer was compromised. I ended the calls very quickly.

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After extensive research, tracking and hacking, I finally found the booger…..

A predator drone has been called in, as soon as it’s done in Libya.

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Yes, they are scamming us here in Vancouver, BC, Canada. I have had three phone calls from them so far. The last call I received, I just told them I had a MAC (not true). That stumped them.

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Doc, very funny! :rolleyes:

This might actually be close to true, who knows.

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This is a world wide problem. I’ve had at least 6 or 7 calls and my wife got one fortunately when I was home. The best way to handle this was carried out by a WindowsBBS forum member who kept the Asian talking on the phone for 30 minutes! He kept asking the Asian to repeat the question/instruction saying he couldn’t understand what was being said.
The conversation finally ended with the Asian guy blowing his cool and swearing over the phone. They do of course expect you to pay for their services and currently they ask in NZ for $60.00 to put a trojan/key logger/virus in your computer.
We have a whistle by the phone to blast and end the scam. Take care out there.

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Why keep them on the line to antagonize them? Just hang up

Mel

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I don’t know whether this is a problem in the USA, but it is in the UK. Most days now I receive a phone call, asking for me by name, no caller ID other than “International”, from someone with an Indian accent, male and female, claiming to be calling from Microsoft. Sometimes it is “Microsoft Technical Service”, sometimes “Windows Registration Department”. A friend was taken in by this hoax, and persuaded to download some file that took control of her computer, which is now away being cleansed.

If you don’t have a support issue open with Microsoft, they will NEVER call you, please don’t be taken by these fraudsters.

There doesn’t appear to be a whole lot of information supporting these scammers specifically asking for people by name when they call.
Let’s not over play it.

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Actually I’m not sure it’s possible to overplay it – it’s worldwide and it’s getting worse, and there’s plenty of information showing that they often ask for people by name. I’ve researched a few threads such as this one http://money-watch.co.uk/7118/beware-of-the-windows-phone-scam where many people are reporting being pestered by these scammers and there are new additions to the thread every day. I myself have been suffering many calls and they always ask for me by name apart from one genius who asked for my wife (I was divorced a year ago!). At its worst about 4-8 weeks ago I was getting around 6 calls a day and sometimes more. I’m an internet consultant so I can spot a scam a mile off but there must be a great many who are taken in or at best scared by this, let alone the amount of lost time and blood pressure it causes.

It doesn’t seem to matter what you say to them they persist. I’ve tried telling them I know it’s a scam, I’ve tried shouting at them, I’ve threatened them with prosecution on the occasions when it was a UK number, I’ve told them that as an SEO I can publicise their activities and get their sites to rank for “scam”, I’ve ignored the calls, I’ve tried the whistle technique. Nothing deters them – I even had one who vindictively repeat called me every couple of minutes for hours late one night just to annoy me after I called him a criminal.

I only moved into this house a year ago and my details are withheld from the electoral register so they shouldn’t have got my name from there. The phone company tell me that my details are “ex-directory by default” but I know that they are publicly available on the 192.com site. I’m planning on changing my phone number but I’m not confident that will stop them. I AM confident that this is now a major problem of international criminal activity and that it appears that national police forces are powerless to stop it while the phone companies pretend there isn’t a problem. I’d like to see national bodies like the UK telecomms ombudsman admitting how serious it is (if they even know – their site for reporting any issues is very off-putting) and trying to instigate cross-border action about it and get the telecomms companies to address the issue from a filtering perspective.

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MS has finally admitted (this was either beginning of last week or end of week before) that this is a problem and they have known about this, I hesitate to call it a scam as it does a lot of damage if let into your PC, for quite a few months but refused to admit that it is a problem until recently.

I have personally had two calls, one of them cut of when I spoke to him (in a gentle voice as this ensures no repeat of “billmarshal’s” experience of vindictive behaviour. The second one cut of when I think he recognised my voice (I have a distinctive – NOT distinguished – voice) so it must have been him the first time. Made a mistake in calling same number twice in 24 hour period.

Just say that the PC owner is away on holiday and you cannot touch his PC. This gets rid of them without any backlash.

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One would think that being called specifically by name by these hoax telephone scammers should be far more concerning than the calls themselves.
This would indicate a far more directed and intrusive form of telephone scam than previously random scamming.

The fact that scammers like this, if it is indeed true, are calling you by name should make you wonder how they are getting your name & number in the first place.

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This scam is also rampant here in Australia. I’ve had several such calls and know of some people who’ve actually been taken in by the scammers.

My way of dealing with them is to ask them what version of Windows I’m using, which they would know if they were actually ‘seeing’ my Windows installation as they claim. They have to admit they don’t know, so I tell them I don’t believe they’re from MS and ask them not to call again.

This seems to have worked, as I haven’t had one of their calls for some months now. (Touch wood!):)

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Tell ’em you have a MAC, that stops them in their tracks every time, or that you don’t have a computer.

I’m in New Zealand and I had a flood of about 12-15 calls over a short period but they have since virtually stopped. The last was a few weeks back, a woman with the usual accent and when I told her I didn’t have a computer she just hung up.

Incidentally, whistle blowing is no more than an irritant, a phone cannot transfer that volume and you are more likely to hurt your own ears.

Cheers

Billy

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He called me by my first name and he was calling my unlisted number!! His accent was so thick I could not understand him except enough that I was sceptical. So I asked for his office number so I could call to check him out. He said his name was Jim Barker (yeah like that is his real name) and the microsoft office in Los Angeles is 213-455-3317. I called it back and he answered. A big office like Microsoft and only one person answers the phone? hmmmm….. So I tried to contact Microsoft to ask them about it and I get the usual ‘you can’t fine me’ runaround on their site. Glad I found you guys.

Thx

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I have had several calls from them. If I have time I play along and waste as much of their time as I can. I was told I was blasting maleware all ove the net and they wanted to help me ( a guy with an Indian accent I could barely understand )….. LOL Oh OK great what do I do? Oh you want me to (instructions to see hidden files), ok done, go to “C:Windowsinf” and delete all files ending with .inf because they are infected files. OK Done now what ? Ok delete all files ending with .pnf Well I have no idea where this was going but I was tired fooling around (and had to ask to have instructions repeated again and slowly because I couldn’t understand him so many times) so I asked why I was deleting all my hardware descriptor files and what it had to do with a virus infection. then I launched into a monologue telling him he was well I’ll keep it clean here, but I did suggest his mother and father were btother and sister and unmarrried leaving him a congenital idiot defect; well you get the idea. He hung up. I also recieved one from what sounded like a young Indian woman, I immediately turned it into phonesex call LOL she hung up very quickly.

All this leads up to: don’t complain or hangup. Make the calls so uncomfortable for the people doing it they quit working for the company.

I actually had someone call back and start swearing at me LOL, I must have touched a nerve somewhere. Oh I knew more dirty wirds than him, WAS HE MAD, he actually htreatened phsycial violence.

THese idiots can be gotten to. If enough people do it who knows they may actually stop.

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One would think that being called specifically by name by these hoax telephone scammers should be far more concerning than the calls themselves.
This would indicate a far more directed and intrusive form of telephone scam than previously random scamming.

The fact that scammers like this, if it is indeed true, are calling you by name should make you wonder how they are getting your name & number in the first place.

Our information is all over the place and privacy is a myth. Google has integrated all the sites we’re on, and owns quite a few of them. My information from FB and my blog appear in surprising places. Which is why there is not much information – but I am in the phone book, and on-line phone books are available to the world. I shudder when I see some of the things people post publically … their holiday plans, location with map, family information, job, etc.

I assume that anything I post anywhere on the ‘net, can be seen by anyone in the world. Be careful out there.

btw, I do the “I’m so stupid” game with these callers. Time wasted with me is money lost (I hope) to them, and while I’m having some fun, someone else isn’t getting scammed.

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I have recently received several bogus phone calls and one text message which was probably a similar attack only I wasn’t from Microsoft. I receied phone calls telling me that there were some issues with my Wells Fargo credit card ant it was about tobe cancelled. Then I received text message a few days later stating the said credit card had been “cancelled!”

Well I don’t have a Wells Fargo credit card in the first place so I looked up my local Wells Fargo office (I didn’t want to use the one in the messages because I was suspicious of them) and they told my that there is an ongoing phishing scam and they’re trying to track it down. The main point here is that this type of scam can, and likely is, applied with respect to any company not just someone like Microsoft or a wells Fargo. Be careful out there!

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I don’t know whether this is a problem in the USA, but it is in the UK. Most days now I receive a phone call, asking for me by name, no caller ID other than “International”, from someone with an Indian accent, male and female, claiming to be calling from Microsoft. Sometimes it is “Microsoft Technical Service”, sometimes “Windows Registration Department”. A friend was taken in by this hoax, and persuaded to download some file that took control of her computer, which is now away being cleansed.

If you don’t have a support issue open with Microsoft, they will NEVER call you, please don’t be taken by these fraudsters.

i nearly got conned by a pair of gentlemen with indian accents. one bloke phoned saying he was from microsoft technical department ,saying that i was sending junk e mail with crash reports from internet explorer. as i have had problems with explorer and was sending crash reports,i nearly believed him. when i said i couldnt trust him he put me in touch with his so called supervisor, whom i nearly let have access to my computer. if it wasnt for the fact they seemed agitated and desperate and that i had read about this in the “windows secrets newsletter”, which set the alarm bells ringing,to which i put the phone down. i wish to thankyou all and keep up the good work, “relieved computer user”

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I don’t know if this has helped me to avoid such scams, but I keep a very clean computer and use privacy controls in all of my browser sessions. My computers do not retain most log files, and my browsers do not advertise me through retained cookies and Flash Objects. (CCleaner and the ClickNClean browser plug-in are able to do a very fast job of cleaning out almost everything after an online session. Abine makes excellent privacy add-ons.)

I am usually polite when callers ask to speak with me, and if anything seems amiss, I know how to challenge them to present specific details about my computer configuration, which they should be able to see if they really are accessing my computer remotely. Or if they really do represent Microsoft and have received problem reports through legitimate Windows features.

Also, I have disabled Remote Access and Network Sharing on my computers. I only enable these features when I absolutely need them. When not in use, my WiFi radio is turned off at the hardware level (possible through the right-click menu in the Tray Icon). My Windows 7 computer does not even belong to a HomeGroup. Call me paranoid, but no one ever bothers me if I have not called them first.

-- rc primak

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It’s prevalent here in the UK to, but appears to have dropped in frequency of late.

The victim receives a phone call asking to speak to them or one of their household by name. The caller pretends to be “Bob from Microsoft security department”, or some similar sounding official title calling to inform the victim that their PC has been reporting errors to Microsoft and that he is there to help.

The victim is directed to open the Windows Logs in Event Viewer and sort on the Level field. This lists the errors first. The victim in encouraged to discuss some of those errors and is met by phrases like “umm, that’s bad”, or “ahh, yes definitely a virus”.

The next part is the really dangerous part. Here in the UK, the victim is asked to navigate his or her browser to ammyy.com or teamviewer.com, to install the remote access application and to establish a remote desktop session to the attacker. The attacker then uses several different methods to con the victim into giving their banking / credit card details. The victim is sometimes directed to a fake website to enter the details, or even to quote their details over the phone to the attacker.

Either way, at that stage the attacker has complete control over the victim’s machine and has their financial details. Not a good situation to find yourself in.

The direct calling of the victim was alleged to be due to a couple of bad guys in a call centre in the sub-continent run on behalf of one of the UK’s leading broadband suppliers. The attackers got the names and numbers of the victims from a database held on behalf of the service provider. Those guys were recently caught, and in my experience the frequency of these attacks has reduced.

Earlier this year, I had many calls from clients who had been victim to the fraud. In one case the victim was caught off guard and allowed full access to the attacker, but stopped short of giving their financial details.

In some reports people have said that they don’t own a PC, or that they work for the police, or other avoidance methods, only to be met with a tirade of verbal abuse and multiple nuisance calls throughout the day.

Interesting to see the fraud is still prevalent in other countries. If you suspect you are the victim of such a fraud, report it to you local law enforcement authorities, contact your bank and get in touch with a reputable local PC services company to clean out the system.

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I also keep a clean browser, and choose to delete all browsing history and cookies when I close the browser, plus use CCleaner and Privacy Mantra to assist in further cleaning on a regular basis. This won’t stop hoax calls, but may stop the perpetrators from getting info to use in these calls. I guess I have not heard of a lot of this here in the states recently. Several years ago these were much more prevalent here than now.

Unfortunately, the people that need to hear this, or read this, don’t visit these forums. We need to somehow get word out to the masses. And yes contact the police if you receive one of these calls. The more contacts they get the better the chance these individuals will get caught.

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I don’t know whether this is a problem in the USA, but it is in the UK. Most days now I receive a phone call, asking for me by name, no caller ID other than “International”, from someone with an Indian accent, male and female, claiming to be calling from Microsoft. Sometimes it is “Microsoft Technical Service”, sometimes “Windows Registration Department”. A friend was taken in by this hoax, and persuaded to download some file that took control of her computer, which is now away being cleansed.

If you don’t have a support issue open with Microsoft, they will NEVER call you, please don’t be taken by these fraudsters.

The above information is correct – Microsoft do not cold call users.
We have this same hoax in Australia.
I had several such calls and decided to play along with the last caller – a seemingly polite lady from India.
She directed me to view some supposed files that were downloaded with out my knowledge and told me I had an issue with my computer downloading unwanted and dangerous files.
She gave me instructions, which I carefully pretended to follow, repeatedly asking her what would happen to my computer.
She got a little frustrated because I continually asked what was happening and eventually she said “Just trust me!”
When she was about to activate a remote session with my computer, I really acted dumb and she became quite impatient with me.
Finally I said, “I know exactly what you are doing, I am a computer professional for may years.”
She then really lost it and asked me why I was wasting her time.
My reply was that this is a well known hoax in Australia and she must have wasted many a victim’s time.
She really lost it and I heard what I suppose were some choice Hindi swear words but I soon got the desired hang up at her expense.
InterestinglyI have never had such a caller since- I wonder if they share information?

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You really have to be carefull. I’ve been getting emails claiming to be from PayPal. They look pretty good but the links look bogus.

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Never click on a link in an email especially from a financial site. Open a browser and manually type the log in address you normally use.

Jerry

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While email scams are a serious matter, they are not relevant in this thread. This thread is about unsolicited “Microsoft tech support” phone calls only. Thanks to all for your cooperation in keeping on-topic here.

-- rc primak

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It’s even spread here to South Africa…(!)

My Rig: AMD Ryzen 9 5900X 12-Core CPU; ASUS Cross Hair VIII Formula Mobo; Win 11 Pro (64 bit)-(UEFI-booted); 32GB RAM; 2TB Corsair Force Series MP600 Pro 2TB PCIe Gen 4.0 M.2 NVMe SSD. 1TB SAMSUNG 960 EVO M.2 NVME SSD; MSI GeForce RTX 3090 VENTUS 3X 24G OC; Microsoft 365 Home; Condusiv SSDKeeper Professional; Acronis Cyberprotect, VMWare Workstation Pro V17.5. HP 1TB USB SSD External Backup Drive). Dell G-Sync G3223Q 144Hz Monitor.

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I believe it is spreading to areas that have not been saturated in the past. It probably started in the US then after a while the returns were less so they expanded world wide. The problem is there are so many people worldwide that have no knowledge of this that they are successful.

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Also, I have disabled Remote Access and Network Sharing on my computers. I only enable these features when I absolutely need them. When not in use, my WiFi radio is turned off at the hardware level (possible through the right-click menu in the Tray Icon). My Windows 7 computer does not even belong to a HomeGroup. Call me paranoid, but no one ever bothers me if I have not called them first.

Ok, hey paranoidie, but you are one safe dude that’s for sure. I couldn’t survive 5 minutes that way…my whole operation would just come to a screeching halt!

Ted’s got the best angle on it…I don’t worry one millisecond about anyone trying to socially engineer hacks on me…but for my Mom and Dad, different story. I can get the work out to them but how many more are clueless? Has to be many millions.
Like when that game show host of the Price is Right would always sign off with spay and neuter your pets, the word should get out over and over some way so it reaches the folks it needs to.

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Ok, hey paranoidie, but you are one safe dude that’s for sure. I couldn’t survive 5 minutes that way…my whole operation would just come to a screeching halt!

Ted’s got the best angle on it…I don’t worry one millisecond about anyone trying to socially engineer hacks on me…but for my Mom and Dad, different story. I can get the work out to them but how many more are clueless? Has to be many millions.
Like when that game show host of the Price is Right would always sign off with spay and neuter your pets, the word should get out over and over some way so it reaches the folks it needs to.

If you need these features always-on, at least secure your router and keep your software firewall and browsers up to date. That’s about the best folks who must be exposed to the outside world can do. And I am probably not well protected against scam phone calls — I have only been lucky.

For most folks, getting the word out is indeed the best practice. Maybe our local news stations would like to run stories about these experiences?

-- rc primak

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Also, I have disabled Remote Access and Network Sharing on my computers. I only enable these features when I absolutely need them. When not in use, my WiFi radio is turned off at the hardware level (possible through the right-click menu in the Tray Icon). My Windows 7 computer does not even belong to a HomeGroup. Call me paranoid, but no one ever bothers me if I have not called them first.

Ok, hey paranoidie, but you are one safe dude that’s for sure. I couldn’t survive 5 minutes that way…my whole operation would just come to a screeching halt without network sharing!

Ted’s got the best angle on it…I don’t worry one millisecond about anyone trying to socially engineer hacks on me…but for my Mom and Dad, different story. I can get the word out to them but how many more are clueless? Has to be many millions.
Like when that game show host of the Price is Right would always sign off with spay and neuter your pets, the word should get out over and over some way so it reaches the folks it needs to.

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count in new-zealand also http://www.whycall.me/25240212258.html looks like this thing has gone global!

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Hmmm, the information age, the Internet, and global?…I don’t see the connection! :p

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I too have received these hoax calls, my wife received the last one and said to them “That’s strange we don’t have a computer” even though we do, at which point they instantly hung up!!

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Just to add to the stories.

(1) My father-in-law, not the most computer-literate man on the planet (he claims to be the founder of the quill pen society) had one of these calls the other day and told the caller he didn’t have a computer (true, it’s his wife that has one) and that ended the call quickly.

(2) One time when I had such a call, I was told that my computer was infected with the HIV/Aids virus! I’m still laughing about that one. One of my friends suggested that the answer was to fit my computer with a condom.

Like one of the previous posters, I think that we are getting fewer of these calls in the UK at the moment.

Ian

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The biggest problem, as mentioned previously, is the fact that the vast majority of PC users out there do not read these forums, so do not realise this is a hoax. We all have to do our part to try to get the work out to all our family and friends about this hoax. MS will not EVER call you about your PC being comprimised, just like Bill Gates will never give away 1000’s of PCes just for supplying info or trying something, and there is NO Nigerian Prince that left you money, and on, and on, and on…..

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I had my first (and hopefully last) such call yesterday.
I have caller display, and if I see ‘unavailable’ or ‘witheld’ I don’t answer the phone, but the phone rang and it got picked up and passed to me …. It was a call from India I think. I was addressed by name, told he was from Microsoft Technical department, and that they’d noticed many people in my (named) area had unwittingly downloaded a hidden virus. At first I thought it may be like these phone people who claim to be your own phone line provider offering a cheaper service, but I felt pretty sure there was nothing much amiss with my computer. I firmly & quietly assured him that my AV was reporting nothing amiss and that my computer is running perfectly. He protested, but I repeated what I’d said and he hung up!

I’m not sure where they get the names and locations from, but if someone could try to use my credit card last month to book a flight in Japan (the location flagged it as a suspicious transaction attempt), there has to be ways! There was a spate of stolen data by hackers of several large retailers in the past year, and even where they didn’t get cc details, they’d get names and locations etc.

I did warn my friends and family about the call I got. Perhaps a call to local radio stations or newspapers would help warn people! I know someone in our local radio station so will mention it.

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Yes, as stated the biggest problem is not the people who frequent these forums, it’s the millions out there that do not have a clue this is happening. The hard part is getting the word to those people so every little bit helps.

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Just adding to the mix. I just got off the phone with a man with an Indian accent claiming to be from the Microsoft Support Group/Microsoft Help team. He said they have been logging alot of errors from my PC so they know my computer has a problem. Really? I say. Absolutely sir. He directs me to the run box via Windows-R key stroke and has me type in eventvwr. This took quite awhile do to his accent and me playing dumb (Why? What for? etc. He’s going to show me, for my benefit he insists.) Then we open the Application log and he has me scoll down looking for red x’d error messages. Do you have more than 5? he asked. Crikey, I’ve a bunch of them, I said. Then he had me scroll down looking for Yellow Warning messages. I have a bunch of those too. He says that it is all the Errors and Warnings that have prompted the helpdesk to call me about my PC. He says it has problems that I don’t even know about. Did I know about all these Errors and Warnings? No, I didn’t, I truthfully answered. The he has me go back to the Run screen and type in http://www.aammyy.com. I when he says to hit enter, I said I don’t want to hit enter until I know what this web site is all about. He says this will connect me to a technician that is waiting to help clear up all these issues my PC is having (remember all those Errors and Warnings?). I checked my phone… 10 minutes had elapsed. I hung up on him. He sounded sincere and was fairly convincing because he seemed know a lot about PC’s in the sense that, being a GUI menu follower, I have never heard of the keystroke shortcut Windows-R to pull up the run command screen and it never occurred to me to use the run command to connect to a web site. Cool. I can image many other people falling for this. I am in New Jersey and this just happened. Oh, yea, the call came from Seattle, WA (and for those of us that never bothered to look up Redmond on a map, we associate Seattle, WA with MS). The caller id log says: 206-456-0661. Enjoy! and Be Careful out There. (really enjoyed Hill Street Blues…)

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Elderly relatives of mine also received a call from “Windows” (Not “Microsoft”). They spotted the problem immediately and blew off the caller. If a 90year old can spot the hoax, it probably isn’t all that sophisticated. I received a similar call – also from “Windows”. I told them, the only one in the house who knew anything about computers was my grandson and he was running BeOS. That ended the conversation right there.
I have a suggestion for anyone in the UK: I tested a device called trueCall (http://www.truecall.co.uk/) which is designed to stop nuisance calls (Sales calls, marketing surveys, election pollsters etc.) That gizmo works like a charm and discourages pretty much all automated calls. (Pitty it’s not available in North America)

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How they get names is beyond me. But I’ve gotten one such call, months ago, Indian accent, same spiel as noted above, I let him talk for a while as I was not busy and he was entertaining, when he got to the “remote in” part, I said, look pal, I’m a computer professional (which is not true) and I know Microsoft can’t do what you are claiming and he hung up on me. :^)

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Fortunately, these phone calls are bound to english speaking regions. I am reading some tech support sites and forums here in central Europe. Never heard of someone beeing scammed like its described here. It seems as they have not found any german speakers amongst them.

Addition/Correction: I just talked to a friend about this on the phone, and he stated he has read of some persons in Switzerland. Well, worldwide, Switzerland is well known for its multilinguality, so those scammers can expect some english knowledge there.

[sarkasm] Looks like I have just found a business model for Germany[/sarcasm]

Good luck to you all out there, and all others who dont know about this scams, to “survive” without any damage.

••K®IS••

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I just rec’d an email following up on this thread. I didn’t click on the link but came here to report it….
complete header

From Windows Secrets Lounge Tue Jul 3 22:10:15 2012
X-Apparently-To: Tue, 03 Jul 2012 22:10:17 -0700
Return-Path:
Received-SPF: none (domain of web.windowssecrets.com does not designate permitted sender hosts)
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Subject: Reply to thread ‘Hoax calls from “Microsoft”‘
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ITMonteur has just replied to a thread you have subscribed to entitled – Hoax calls from “Microsoft” – in the General Windows forum of Windows Secrets Lounge.

This thread is located at:
http://windowssecrets.com/forums/showthread//141855-Hoax-calls-from-quot-Microsoft-quot?goto=newpost

Here is the message that has just been posted:
***************
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***************

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Windows Secrets Lounge

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I believe this advertising thread and member have been deleted and banned this morning. Hopefully this will be the last you get from them.

I would also edit your last post to get rid of your email address in the post.

I have also reported this is our VIP/Moderator Forum.

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This email you just copied is a subscription email, sent by the forum, because you subscribed to the thread. Check your subscription settings in the Settings menu, located at the top right in each forum page.

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