So before I tell you how you can royally screw with tech support scammers, it’s important that you know how the scam works. Most of the calls that I seem to get these days are from scammers, many claiming to be from “the tech support department.” While I haven’t yet found a way of putting a stop to these calls, I have found that messing with tech support scammers can be a source of endless amusement. More importantly, the calls themselves have changed. Besides, it is way too easy to spoof caller ID information. The Microsoft Cordless Phone System is extinct. For one thing, my method of dealing with unwanted callers would never work now. I’ll leave the message contents to your imagination, but let’s just say that my technique was very effective in putting a stop to the relentless telemarketing calls. Any time that a call came in from any of the numbers in the group, the system was programmed not to ring (so that I would not be disturbed), and to play a special message to the telemarketer. With a few tweaks to the software, I was able to create a “telemarketers group.” Any time I received a call from a telemarketer, I added the caller ID information to the group. For example, the phone could compile a call log on your PC, and you could create custom greetings depending on who was calling. Many of this phone’s capabilities were almost unheard of at the time. I’m not talking about Windows Phone, I’m talking about an old school, 900MHz cordless phone that was controlled by a PC. Even so, I decided that I had to do something, so I came up with an awesome way of putting a stop to the calls.īack then, I used something called the Microsoft Cordless Phone System. Most of those calls were annoying but relatively harmless. At its peak, I was getting multiple calls per hour. “Anyone who receives unsolicited calls claiming to be from tech support or broadband engineers and asking for personal details or to install computer software should hang up and phone their provider back using the legitimate phone number (that they have independently looked up).For a time in the late 1990s, I was getting flooded with phone calls from telemarketers. “Which? is calling on banks to reimburse all blameless customers who fall victim to these scams and for the government to introduce legislation to ensure a new statutory code of practice can be created, which would include clear standards and protections for victims,” she said. Jenny Ross, the Which? money editor, said millions of pounds are lost to computer takeover scams every year. If a customer has concerns or receives a call they believe is not from Amazon, they should check the .uk help pages for guidance.” “We take phishing and spoofing attempts on our customers seriously, and will never call a customer for payment outside of our website. Unsolicited requests for remote access to your computer should always raise a red flag, it said.Īn Amazon spokesperson warned customers to be on their guard. It is important for consumers across the UK to be alert to the possibility that they too could receive bogus cold calls to fix an issue with their Amazon Prime account ahead of Black Friday,” he said.Īction Fraud has warned consumers to never install any software or visit a website as a result of a cold call. “This will allow hackers to communicate with a command and control server to install secondary exploits such as keyloggers. Ray Walsh, digital privacy expert at ProPrivacy said providing remote access to your PC can result in hackers installing sophisticated malware. The fraudsters took over her laptop and a total of £6,900 was taken from her bank account and credit card. It highlighted the case of a woman from Brighton who lost almost £7,000 in July to a cold caller claiming to be from Amazon Prime security who tricked her into downloading TeamViewer. This week the consumer group Which? warned of the dangers of computer takeover scams which cost victims more than £16m a year. While this is by no means a new fraud, scammers are thought to have taken advantage of the fact that many households have signed up to Amazon Prime since the pandemic hit.
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