Ubuntu thwarts phisher phone call!

[coffee412]

<ring, ring, ring...>

My Girlfriend: Hello?
Person: Hello, My name is <blah> and I am calling to see if you use windows.
My Girlfriend: Nope.
Person: You dont? Are you sure? Im talking about your computer at home.
My Girlfriend: No, I use Ubuntu Linux.

<click!>

My Girlfriend: Hello? Are you there?


Thanks Ubuntu and linux in general for such a great experience. Soon, We will own the world!!

coffee

[uRock]

That's awesome.

[sammiev]

It's a scam at that. lol People have been doing this for a while and it has been on the news.

[coffee412]

Never had it happen to me before. Wish it would. My Girlfriend called me via cell and told me about it.

Had to share it!

coffee

[3rdalbum]

They called me the other day claiming to be from "Windows Support", saying that my computer had been sending them error messages.

I told them that I use Linux on all my computers and they hung up before I could tell them what scumbag scammers they are.

However, later I thought of something better I could have done. They open an RDP connection to your computer and install something, don't they? Well I should have opened up some images from famous shock sites on my desktop before letting them in with RDP. Would have been funny to hear their reaction.

[Ji Ruo]

Yes this scam has been quite active across Australia too. Telling them you're an IT student specialising in security also brings on a quick disconnection.

[Lucradia]

Never happened here either. Good thing I put myself on the no-call list.

[Metallion]

Awesome story. It would have been even better though, if somebody led them into a honey pot, found out who they are and got those bastards arrested.

[BeRoot ReBoot]

You should have gotten them to incriminate themselves and record the whole thing, than forward it to the police.

[ve4cib]

I got a call like that a while ago, only they didn't even both to ask if I used Windows. They just dove in telling me that they'd been receiving error messages.

Feeling somewhat bored at the time, I decided to play along as long as I could, looking up screenshots of Windows process managers so I could tell them what I was seeing.

I managed to keep them busy for about 10 minutes before he hung up on me out of frustration at my apparent computer illiteracy. I found that to be hilarious.

The way I see it, I only lost 10 minutes of my time, and during that time I hopefully prevented at least one gullible person from being scammed. Yay unintended public service!