Patch Lady – 31 days of Paranoia – Day 25

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How many times has this happened to you?  You get a call and the person on the other end of the phone says you have a problem with your [computer, iPh
[See the full post at: Patch Lady – 31 days of Paranoia – Day 25]

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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Elly, SueW

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It happened to my 80+ year old mother and ruined any chance she had of staying connected to her grandchildren a thousand miles away. Mom was not a computer wiz, but she was once capable of bookkeeping, reading and writing emails, and keeping in touch on Facebook.

Scammers got to her by phone, loaded malware on her PC, and took her money for bogus remote maintenance and support services. My brother who lives near Mom tried to clean the computer and told her not to talk to strangers, but they kept at it.

She became convinced that there was something wrong with her computer. Worse than that, she lost confidence in her own ability to use it safely.

As dementia set in, Mom spent her last few years afraid to turn on the computer, instead of enjoying photos and videos of her grandchildren.

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Despicable. How I wish we could catch these scumbags who ruin people’s lives or take away whatever enjoyment an elderly person might have gotten from her computer.

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

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Latka

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I get them frequently, I like to waste their time by playing along until they want to access my PC. Then I simply tell them I am running Linux, or Chrome OS and then they hang up.

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They’ve pretty much stopped calling me; I try to waste as much of their time and phone bill money as possible while playing dumb, setting the phone down for extended periods, etc. I think some of them may have me on their DNC list.

There’s no way I’m ever going to let any stranger (or most friends, for that matter) RDP into my home PC. And vice-versa. RDP is disabled on my PC and TeamViewer, etc. are not installed.

If a family member or friend needs PC help, I’ll either go to their physical location or attempt to resolve their issues via voice comms or email.

Yup, I’m paranoid that way.

Windows 10 Pro x64 v1909 Desktop PC

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YouTube has some videos with hackers giving the scammers a taste of their own medicine.  They are pretty funny. Search for “scammers destroyed” to watch the scammers in panic.

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What I want to know is this: Why is it becoming more and more “common and acceptable” for people to prey on other people? Wasn’t connection and the free exchange of information supposed to enlighten everyone?

Yet here we are in 2018 with marketers, politicians, folks you pay for things, etc. just outright lying to us at an unprecedented level rather than just doing honest work. So many people have stories of being scammed – or their elders being scammed.

I remember as a kid deep in the last century in Social Studies thinking, “Wow, now that we have ‘truth in advertising laws’, Ralph Nader, and the prospect of a ‘Consumer Protection Agency’ we’re past all that; I’m so lucky to be alive in the 20th century!”

An oldie that’s still a goodie to live by:

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

-Noel

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Steve, Elly, Myst, wdburt1, SueW, Sessh

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This dude frequently wrecks the scammers: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBNG0osIBAprVcZZ3ic84vw/videos?disable_polymer=1

He keylogs them, tracks their IPs, tracks them right down to their call centres in Kolkata. Some of them are actually financed by behind the scenes by non-Indian people such as “Mr Cotter”.. (make of that what you will).

Since TeamViewer now warns you about connections from India, a frequent tactic they use is to get you to connect to THEIR machine first (re-named to “BT Main Server” or something), then use the swap partner function to give them warning-free, remote access to yours.

He plays around pretending he doesn’t know what he’s doing, clicking “disable remote input” and “blank screen” to blind them and prevent them cancelling what he’s doing on their machine. Then he syskeys them to fully lock them out of the machine, and downloads all their files. XD He gets salary lists, full names, allsorts.

He also then installs software on their machines and interferes with them while they’re scamming other customers (check the refund scam videos), where they spend ages altering html elements on a bank statement page to display false data to the victim, he then goes and refreshes it every time, so they have to do it all again, drives them barmy.

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We have Caller ID. Whenever an incoming call is bogus my wife answers, “Kirkwood Police Dispatcher”. They hang up imediately. She also likes to respond, “What is a computer?”

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Myst, SueW, MrJimPhelps

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Just for the heck of it I asked one of these guys how to pay them if they found and fixed something wrong on my computer.  I told them I didn’t have a Debit or Credit card.  They told me to go to either Walgreens or Walmart and buy $500 of I-Tunes cards then call back.  Naturally I didn’t give him access to my computer or buy the cards…

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@Anon: There are a LOT of videos and channels of videos on YouTube of dedicated “hackers” running VMs that bait these completely unscrupulous scammers then drop the hammer on them by reversing control of the remote connection and destroying the individual scammer’s PC’s files or, in the best ones, getting into their net and wreaking havoc. I love watching these videos. Search YT or Wikipedia for “scam baiters” or “scam baiting.”

@Noel Carboni: In this age of global information connectivity, it certainly seems more common seeing these scum (be they tech scammers/credit card scammers/service providers/list goes on) prey on the unwary or elderly. Doesn’t make it acceptable, of course. I try to live by your last bolded sentence.

What goes around comes around [edited]

-Grond

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If you want to watch someone do it live and with a comedic spin : Kitboga streams himself doing this for a living :
https://www.twitch.tv/kitboga/
His Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm22FAXZMw1BaWeFszZxUKw

He doesn’t hack them or anything. He wastes their time. He plays different characters with a voice changer. He goes for a more humane approach trying to connect with some of them on a personal level and ask them why they are doing this. He was even successful in befriending one of them recently who then went on to scambait another scammer in a 3 way call for the entertainment of thousands watching live. It also gave him some insider information on how these things operate.
Edit: HTML removal – Please use the ‘Text’ tab in the post entry box when you copy/paste.

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We got so tired of spammers, scammers, and robo callers that we don’t even pick up unless we recognize the name / number, and let those we don’t recognize go to the answering machine.  We also added Nomorobo to our VOIP land line.  Nomorobo blacklists numbers and blocks these calls after one ring.  If Nomorobo doesn’t catch them, they hang up when they hear the answering machine.  Dealing with these bottom feeders isn’t worth our time.

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wdburt1

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Between Nomorobo and the fact that I’m not at home a good portion of the day, I seem to discourage these types of calls. Not sure why, but they also don’t seem to go after VOIP (ISP supplied phone lines) customers as much as traditional landline or wireless-only customers. I haven’t seen any statistics about this, but maybe Comcast, Verizon and other ISPs do some of their own filtering? At least if folks are signed up with Nomorobo at the ISP’s invitation?

-- rc primak

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Locally, AT&T U-verse and Cox Cable field VOIP land lines exclusively.  On AT&T some calls come up “INVALID NUMBER” on caller ID, so there is some limited internal checking.  We are rarely bothered on our cell phones or on the Ooma Telo VOIP number.

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It may have something to do with the fact that Nomorobo works only on VOIP lines, because it needs the Caller ID for a nanosecond.

Back when I had a traditional landline, I had a little box that required all callers to press “1” or something like that.  It was a bit of an imposition on some callers, but pretty effectively stopped the robocalls.  It didn’t work with VOIP for some reason.

Nowadays, robocallers spoof the recipients local exchange prefix, so even looking at the Caller ID doesn’t protect you.  Because I was waiting for a local contractor to call, I picked up one such call a couple of days ago, only to hear a recorded credit card scam.

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I used to get a lot of these calls and really enjoyed them: they provide a unique opportunity to vent. For example, if the caller announced he/she was from Microsoft, I would reply: “At last! I’ve been trying to get hold of you lot for years to give you a piece of my mind! What makes you think it’s O.K. to post buggy patches down the Windows Update chute every month and try to coerce little old ladies like me to upgrade to Windows X before we’re good and ready? Now, if I had my way, you’d all be held liable……………………” etc., etc. Invariably, the caller would hang up, and for some reason I get far less of such calls these days.

But give them access to my computer? No way. And give them money, or the equivalent? I can’t see myself doing that even when I finally lose my marbles. I’m too mean.

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Steve, Myst

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I mainly use email or Skype to keep in touch and no longer use my landline phone unless I need to make a voice call or know that a call is coming, from some relative or my doctor, for example. Otherwise I unplug it from its wall socket and then probably stays like that for days on end. I have my voicemail set to come on after ten rings. When I plug it in again, from time to time, to to see who called, about 90% of the time there are several messages waiting in the voicemail inbox whose callers click off after a few seconds without words being spoken. Occasionally there is the one with a recorded message threatening legal action or offering some product or service supposedly to help old people get on with their daily lives. Same with my cellphone, which I use in rare circumstances, such as last time, when my car had a flat battery because I did not notice that a cabin light was on when I parked it for the night. There was no one around to help me jump start the car, so I called the AAA and left my cell number with them in case they needed to call me back. Other than to organizations like that and in similarly unusual situations, I have not given my cell number to anyone I don’t know. But I still can see “missed calls” waiting in its mailbox, from weird numbers, when I check to see who called.

Where do they learn my phone numbers, my age group, the state and city where I live, enough to hit anywhere at all close to the mark with their calls? Besides Big Brother watching, Big Sister, Big Uncle, Big Aunt and Big Cousin surely are too.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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They normally hang up if you say you use Linux.

Another scam we get here, phone calls allegedly from our biggest Telco saying there is a problem with our Internet service.

-lehnerus2000

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I suppose these scammers are rather less common around here. Hard to be convincing about being from even our big national telco or some such if they don’t speak the language, I guess… and since there’s still no good-enough online translator, email scammers don’t get far either.

 

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