Social Engineering FAIL!

[Jay 2K Winger]

Was it Hackers? with Angelina Jolie. Seems really familiar.

Ding ding ding! That's Dade's first hack-job we see him do in-movie.

[Blue Ginger]

So what do I win?

Bacon? free tech support for a year? Vodka? or cookies?

mmmmm cookies

[dalesys]

So what do I win?

Bacon? free tech support for a year? Vodka? or cookies?

mmmmm cookies

Private House concert from Angelina's uncle, Chip Taylor. He can sing Angel of the Morning, Wild Thing, and many other great songs he's written.

[Blue Ginger]

Yep, that prize s good for me. I have a Muppets recording of Animal doing Wild Thing. It was my ring tone at one point.

[Cooper]

Oh, I went wild with one of these guys.

Him: Hello, I am from windows. Your computer has a virus on it.
Me: which one?
Him: What?
Me: The house has three laptops in use, a desktop, and we own four desktops for our small business. So which one has a virus on it?

Then, he tries to direct me to do something, which I used my laptop to research. It isn't harmful (yet) so I do it. This leads to a sector of the computer that always says it has errors.

Him: How many errors does it have?
Me: A lot.
Him: Oh God! Alright, here's what we have to do next...

From here, my memory of the convo gets rather vague, but it was basically:

Him: Now you do this. Have you done it?
Me: Nope. What next?
Him: No, you need to do this.
Me: I have lots of computers I gotta run this on. I'm writing this stuff down. What do I do next?

This went on until I told him I knew this was all lies and I was wasting his time.

My mother, on the other hand, loves to explain to them everything they're doing wrong. "Oh, you're from windows? So you're calling me from inside my computer huh? There is no company called Windows. Windows is a product made by Microsoft." At that point, they hung up.

My father would use the work fax machine and call them back with it. Repeatedly, whenever he was upstairs, until he got bored of it.

Moral of the story? My family is full of trolls.

[SteeleDragon78]

looks like they tried it with Ars today, this article is very disturbing and saddening.

[lordlundar]

I swear if I ever get another one of these I'm going to play along just long enough to get to Event Viewer, proclaim my computer just died and proceed to blame, threaten to sue, etc. With any luck I'll get him to @$@! his pants.

[Cia]

I got one of those calls, I said 'What's a computer? I don't own any computers." The guy hung up on me. <is sad>

[artcurmudgeon]

I got one of those...

"I am calling from Windows because your computer has a virus"

::Big Evil Grin::

" Really? How is it that with 20+ years of experience and owning my own computer business, I would allow myself to get a virus, let alone allow a stranger to call me up and try to scam me in any way shape and or form?!?"

::Hangs up::

...Thought so.....

[Gizmo]

I was sad when one of them didn't know what Linux was... I wanted to have some fun!

[Plague*Star]

I did like one of his lines: "Sir, I sense that you're feeling resistant to my helping MYSELF"

You think? =P

There, fixed that for ya
P*S

[Bandit]

I keep being at work - ya know, in IT - when these clowns call.

I *SO* want to channel my 87-year old dad who has challenges with a remote control for a TV to deal with these idiots. It would be so much fun.

"Be of opening Windows"

5 mins later

"All my windows are open. It's cold in here and the furnace is running. What's next?"

Lather, Rinse, Repeat.

B

[EricKei]

My roomie recently had the virus/spyware version of this -- the second he tried to connect to the internet in any way (including updating his antivirus program), a screen-filling box with no way to minimize/close/move it popped up that disabled CTRL-ALT-DEL and every other method of getting rid of it, claimed it was from the FBI, and wanted $200 from him in order to re-enable his internet account, as it claimed he had downloaded something he shouldn't have ~_~

Fortunately, he at least thought to ask me about it. Was fun getting rid of it, but these guys forgot one little thing ... In Windows 7, there is an (apparently) intentional delay for a couple of seconds between "now shutting down all of your programs" and actually shutting down. If you cancel the shut down during those few seconds, you can get right back into Windows (albeit, likely with some of your TSR's terminated). Fortunately, the spyware app was apparently high on the list of stuff to preemptively kill, so I was able to get in, update AV, install AVG & SpyBot, and clean out his system using those. Took all night to scan in "DOS" mode, but heck, it worked ^_^

[Geek King]

My roomie recently had the virus/spyware version of this -- the second he tried to connect to the internet in any way (including updating his antivirus program), a screen-filling box with no way to minimize/close/move it popped up that disabled CTRL-ALT-DEL and every other method of getting rid of it, claimed it was from the FBI, and wanted $200 from him in order to re-enable his internet account, as it claimed he had downloaded something he shouldn't have ~_~

If you Google "FBI MoneyPak virus" you'll find all kinds of articles on removing it. Not the easiest one to clean, but definately recoverable with just a bit of work.

One day, if there is Justice in the world, I'll catch one of these jackholes in a dark alley.

[Andara Bledin]

If you have a Window that is not Maximized (just oversized for the display), you can hit Alt+Space to get to the bar menu, then M to get to the Move option or X to Maximize (which should force it to fit the screen display) or N to Minimize (which should drop it to the tray).

Not sure if that works in Win7, but I've had to resort to it in XP due to one particular program we use spawning windows way off-screen for no good reason. >_>

^-.-^