Beating back the telephone virus scammers

[Paddy Landau]

I would have called the police from another phone during the attempted scam.

No, no point. If you read one of the earlier posts in this thread, you'll see that they pop up as fast as they are discovered and closed down. For the UK police to try to trace them down in India would be terribly hard, especially if they are using VOIP (which I think they are, as the telephone number is bizarre: 09999) -- and what evidence do I have? The call is not being recorded.

[aysiu]

If you live in America (I think that's the only place it's available now?) and have Google Voice, you can record the call:
http://support.google.com/voice/bin/...&answer=115082

[nothingspecial]

No, no point. If you read one of the earlier posts in this thread, you'll see that they pop up as fast as they are discovered and closed down. For the UK police to try to trace them down in India would be terribly hard, especially if they are using VOIP (which I think they are, as the telephone number is bizarre: 09999) -- and what evidence do I have? The call is not being recorded.

Then I'd have done what you did.

[Dale61]

I would have called the police from another phone during the attempted scam.

The last time they rang me, I kept putting them on hold, and then pressing random numbers on the phone keypad. When asked what the noises were, I told them that I was just transferring the call to a phone closer to the computer.

I also kept saying 'How's that?' in a way that it sounded like I was talking in to another phone. When asked what that was, I told them they were hearing things.

I kept delaying them, and pressing a single number on the keypad every now and then. After about 10 - 15 minutes, I would say, away from the phone, 'OK, so you got it?', which would make them ask the inevitable. I then tell them that they have been tracked and located by ASIO as I reported the caller as a possible terrorist. ASIO's main role is to gather information and produce intelligence that will enable it to warn the government about activities or situations that might endanger Australia's national security.


They must do a google search for ASIO as they hang up really quickly, not even thanking me for my time. Rude pricks!

[matt_symes]

Excellent work Paddy !

This thread should be tweeted.

Would make a great blog entry...

[kitsuneclem]

I had a call from someone who said they were with "windows registry" and they had "detected a problem with my windows licence" I just (not joking) screamed as loud as i can "I have LInux What the floop (floop not being the word i used) would you have to do with my comp" then i told them to floop off and called my mum and my gf's mum to tell them about the scammers and warn them not to do anything they do

havent got a call since

[yetiman64]

Nine months later (!), and the scammers phoned again. I had my Windows XP honeypot ready!

Good to see a result at last Paddy, I have watched this thread from very early on

...Thus, I managed to waste over two hours of his time (every time we had to wait for the computer to respond, I got on with something else in my Ubuntu session ). That's two hours that he was not scamming someone vulnerable...

A well spent 2 hrs by the sound of it, =D>

Keep up the good work. yetiman64

[3rdalbum]

Is there anything that the ordinary person can do to fight back? Can we track back what IP address they are using and just continually send pings to their gateway to slow down their connection? Or something? I'm not likely to get any more of these calls but I'd love to be able to fight back.

[robsoles]

I told the first one what he was doing and why it was dumb to target me with this scam. He was my last one. I have cable now and don't even have (telephone/adsl) copper running into the place I've moved into afaict, yet to hear of anybody getting this kind of call on their mobile

My sister contacted me urgently one day and told me she had someone on her landline (fixed phone, called me with her mobile) who seemed to know as much as her service provider(s) telling her that her computer was broadcasting the details he was giving her onto the internet

I asked her if she had applied any of his instructions to her computer and she told me she had reviewed event manager with him but when he asked her to do anything more serious than that she decided to call me. I asked her if she had given her credit card number to them and she said "don't be silly", I'll cut this story short - Sister was unharmed and unworried at end of call.



My Ex kept one on the phone for an hour just oohing and ahhing over the event manager.


I think it would be very cool if you could opt in to have your phone set that if the caller cannot be clearly identified (and located) then their call is just rejected - it is far from 'beyond technology' to implement such a thing and if it was given the programming to allow users to define who they will accept calls from (ie., exclude any business identified as a tele-marketing concern and also exclude specific business types in specific regions, or entire regions if user so chooses) then telecommunications would be much better value for the dollars the providers usually want for providing it.

[Paqman]

exclude any business identified as a tele-marketing concern

You can do that in some countries, but you have to register to opt-out. In the UK it's done through TPS. Once you're registered it's an offence for telemarketers to contact you.