No, the FBI is not holding your phone hostage

[CrazedClerkthe2nd]

Bad Boys, Bad Boys...

Over the past few months a new bug has been popping up on smartphones around the country and it presents itself like this:



Oooh, scary looking!

Now of course people get freaked about this, worrying about someone has accessed child porn on their phone and now the FBI is after them, since you know, it's their phone.

Of course the dead giveaway this is a scam is the requirement to pay up to access your phone again.

Obviously,if the FBI caught you looking at child porn they'd promptly lock your ass up, they sure as heck wouldn't try to get you to effectively bribe them to look the other way.

It's an easy issue to fix, you just need to find the problem app in your phone, uninstall it and bingo, you can browse the web again.

I've had several women seriously freak out about this to the point of wanting a manager just to be "super sure" that they were not going to be arrested.

I also had a guy who wanted a credit because we "terrified" him with the bogus warning. Nevermind Red Checkmark has nothing to do with the warnings. And no, he didn't get a credit either.

In which I channel Argabarga

Young sounding guy calls in. There's a problem with his wifi. After troubleshooting we determine the reason he can't get on is the network password has changed. No biggie, I ask him if he knows what it is. He doesn't. No problem, I tell him, your ISP can help you with that.

What's that? You have no ISP? Wait--huh?

And that's when he confesses that the wifi he's been using that suddenly stopped working actually belongs to someone ELSE.

Just like Arga's towing victims, this guy starts in with the excuses:

- He's in college and he doesn't have a lot of money (like I've never heard that one before)
- He was only using it "Temporarily" (uh huh, sure....)
- The guy he was "borrowing" it from said it was Ok. (alright well why not just ask him from the password? Busted!)

and the crown jewel:

- The wifi just so happens to be provided by Red Checkmark so why can't I just give him a break and hack it for him? (Oh sure mister, let me violate my own personal ethics, company policy AND the law for you! Not like I've got anything to lose right?)

And then of course he wanted a credit because he was now stuck with the inconvenience of no wifi. (Yes, Really!). He finally wised up to the fact that I wasn't going to cave and hung up.

What a winner.

Shooting for the moon

Talked to a guy whose daughter had broke her iphone 4. No insurance but he's been a long time customer of Red Checkmark (15 years) with a good history so one of my coworkers hooked her up with a 5s free of charge (no contract extension either). In case you weren't aware, that's a PRETTY SWEET DEAL.

Not sweet enough apparently.

Now this guy says his little precious isn't really happy with the 5s and would prefer the iphone 6.

Well setting aside the fact the iphone 5s is fundamentally not that different from the 4, the fact we made an exception for once, we're not doing it again. I don't care if you've been with us 20 years we're only going to go out of policy so many times lest we get walked all over.

I don't care that your daughter doesn't like the phone.

I don't care that you spend "thousands" with us every year

You can threaten to go to Death Star wireless, but it's not going to get you a 6.

I thought he was going to demand a manager but he eventually hung up.

I have a sneaking suspicion he'll be calling back soon...

What part of 'I can't help you' don't you understand?

Look man, I know it sucks that the bluetooth in that spiffy new car you just bought doesn't seem to want to connect with your phone. We've gone over all the basics, everything on the phone works except this.

It's not that I don't want to help you, it's that I CAN'T. You seem to have a difficult time grasping this fact.

My company didn't make the phone and we didn't make the car. I have verified all your Red Checkmark services are working perfectly. There's nothing more that we can do here. Beyond calling the car maker or phone manufacturer, there's nowhere for this to go.

No, a manager won't be able to fix it for you.

No, I won't call the car company for you and call you back later.

No, you can't get a credit for inconvenience (WHAT IS IT WITH THESE PEOPLE?!? )

No, I'm not being unhelpful at all, I just can't get you the help you need because this has NOTHING TO DO WITH ME.

And now you want to cancel your services. Have fun with our retention department. Bye bye now.

[MoonCat]

Oh, lord, those scams. If you read them carefully you can spot red flags all over the place, one of the more obvious being the poor use of language. But then, going by what I hear around me on the average day, it's very possible that most people can't recognize incorrect or badly-spelled English anymore. No wonder they're spooked by these bogus things.

The wifi thief - wants a credit?? But he's not paying for anything, right?

And the rest of these people are idiots, too.

[wolfie]

I can BARELY understand the free 5s (although the 5c would have been more appropriate, as the current-production model closest to the broken one). Customer wants an iPhone 6? That'll be $600 and a 2 year contract extension.

[sirwired]

I could understand gullible people panicking if that bogus "You Are An Evil Scumbag" warning had the least bit appearance of being legit... but the fact that it's completely plastered with grammatical mistakes (not to mention non-American English... the punishment of "deprivation of liberty"? WTF?) should be a clue that it's utterly bogus. Okay, that and the fact you get to choose between YEARS of what I can guess is prison, and a pretty small "basic amounts" fine.

Speaking for myself, if I received such a warning, I'd probably off-load my stuff and factory-wipe my phone, as I wouldn't want to find out the hard way what sort of nefariousness such an app would do to the rest of my phone...

[An Haddock]

1. We probably average 1 person a week who has gotten locked out of their computer due to FBI Virus/Justice Dept. Virus/etc. Never heard of phones getting hit but good to know.

2. Had a couple of people like this, too. Leeching off a neighbor's wireless until they get wise and secure it. Also had a couple of dim bulbs who had us come over to check out why their wireless had stopped working. Turned out they hadn't paid their bills.

4. I don't know why people don't listen when we tell them we can't help them. "But my computer is only 14 years old running Windows Millennium! What do you mean you can't do anything?" or "But I paid a hundred dollars for this inkjet printer! What do you mean you can't fix it?" (our printer tech charges $95 an hour - not worth it for 99% of inkjet printers)

[HawaiianShirts]

If you read them carefully you can spot red flags all over the place, one of the more obvious being the poor use of language.

Seriously. I would imagine something from the FBI would be grammatically correct, even if it contained too much legal-ese to be fully understandable. And what does "It was from your phone, that unauthorized access had been stolen to information of State importance and to data closed for public Internet access" even mean? Are they trying to make the target think that someone stole sensitive government secret files to his or her phone?

I can totally understand people being scared by an apparent hack attempt and asking how to fix it. I can't understand why they'd think the FBI would work this way or write like this.

[Argabarga]

And now you want to cancel your services. Have fun with our retention department. Bye bye now.

And once he signs up with the competitor, and THEY can't help him either, he'll quit them and come back to you.

It's really just the grown-up version of the rage quit after someone nails you from across the map in COD with the nigh-on-impossible sniper shot.

[EricKei]

...with the nigh-on-impossible sniper shot.

BOOM! HEADSHOT!

1. We probably average 1 person a week who has gotten locked out of their computer due to FBI Virus/Justice Dept. Virus/etc.

CW got hit with the "Microsoft support" scammers over the weekend. Whatever they did also disabled the Windows recovery thing at bootup. He doesn't have anything worth saving, so I'm just gonna nuke and pave the thing today

[JetGirl]

Internally the 5s is hella beefed up compared to a 4. That was a deal you'd be hard pressed to get anywhere else. What a spoiled brat.

[EricKei]

Bah. Said CW neglected to inform me that the little MS sticker with the install code is so worn that the first two groups of characters are illegible x.x If I try to access Safe Mode, anything diagnostic-related, or go back to "last good config," the laptop just reboots. Downloading rootkit ISO's now. Wish me luck. He's got some form of ransomware on there that won't let him in without a password. I should have a UBCD I can boot from and disable the password itself with at home if I can't get it working here >_>

[AccountingDrone]

Bah. Said CW neglected to inform me that the little MS sticker with the install code is so worn that the first two groups of characters are illegible x.x If I try to access Safe Mode, anything diagnostic-related, or go back to "last good config," the laptop just reboots. Downloading rootkit ISO's now. Wish me luck. He's got some form of ransomware on there that won't let him in without a password. I should have a UBCD I can boot from and disable the password itself with at home if I can't get it working here >_>

Ugh. I have a little book with all the serial numbers and keycodes and whatnot for every program and computer I have owned, and in many cases I have the program discs and original copies of the various Windows versions [including a 3.1 with the separate Outlook 1.0 disc because it was NOT always part of windows, no matter what the fuckwads claim]

I will admit, and pray to St Vidicon that I don't jinx myself, that I have not yet been hit by a ransom virus/malware on my computing gear. I have done a nuke and pave on my roomies computer *once* and it is a serious pain in the ass.

[TopEndDave]

CW got hit with the "Microsoft support" scammers over the weekend.

I had a variation on the Microsoft Support scammers recently. They claimed to be from Telstra* Support and that they were going to cut off my internet access for 6 months due to viruses. Highlights of the call:

• My internet security software had expired (I had renewed it before it expired)
• This is not a scam call and they get calls from scammers at home.
• Viruses on my computer are affecting the Telstra server.
• They can prove that they are legitimate by revealing my unique computer identifier code.
• Tried to tell me that all the errors in my system event log were due to viruses.

I could have played the annoy the scammers with correct information for longer but had other things to do.

*Biggest phone/Internet company in Australia but not my ISP.

[MadMike]

2. Had a couple of people like this, too. Leeching off a neighbor's wireless until they get wise and secure it.

People seem to have wised up about securing their networks, at least in my area. It's extremely rare that I find an unsecured network, other than one in a business that they provide for their customers.

Years ago, however, there were unsecured networks everywhere. The first time I worked on a computer with a wireless network card, it picked up my neighbor's unsecured network. I know it was theirs because it was called "The (last name) Family." Sometimes when I'd take my son to his grandparents', who live about a quarter of a mile away in the next development, just for fun, my son would turn on his laptop and scan for networks. Every time it would scan, it would pick up a handful of them, mostly with the default name of "Linksys" or similar.

[Sapphire Silk]

Oh, lord, those scams. If you read them carefully you can spot red flags all over the place, one of the more obvious being the poor use of language. But then, going by what I hear around me on the average day, it's very possible that most people can't recognize incorrect or badly-spelled English anymore. No wonder they're spooked by these bogus things.

Given the horrible grammar I read every day in news forum comment sections, or even in the work of my nursing students, I'm hardly surprised.

The rule of thumb in spotting these kinds of scams is to look for the grammatical errors, as you point out. Problem is, if you can barely read and write yourself, you're not going to know a grammatical error if it comes up and smacks you in the face.

What I loved about this scam was the "FBI Department of Defense" in the title of the lockdown screen.

The FBI is part of the Department of Justice, not the Department of Defense.

People seem to have wised up about securing their networks, at least in my area. It's extremely rare that I find an unsecured network, other than one in a business that they provide for their customers.

Years ago, however, there were unsecured networks everywhere.

Neighborhood was full of them when I first moved in. My network was the only one unsecured. Now everyone's network is secured. And the only reason I think that is, is because most of my neighbors are on the fiber network I use. When the tech comes out to install he, he sets up the wireless modem, chooses the network name, sets the security, and puts on a high security password. If my neighbors were still doing it, they'd still have unsecured networks.

[DGoddessChardonnay]

Internally the 5s is hella beefed up compared to a 4. That was a deal you'd be hard pressed to get anywhere else. What a spoiled brat.

That's what I was thinking too. Brat should be grateful she's even getting a new phone at ALL but all I can think of is what my Mom would have done to me in that case.

"You've got two choices: 1) take the 5s and b grateful and shut up about it or b) I'll take the 5s and you can have my old phone. Which is it?"

But there again, it's a good thing cell phones weren't widely available back when I was a teenager. Biggest thing for me was getting my first VCR back in '85 and my first computer in '87.

Young whippernsappers! Get off mah lawhn!