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On 16 July 2016 at 20:00, Martijn Grooten <martijn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > There are all sorts of tricks to convince people they have a "virus > problem", all bogus but all credible if you don't know what's going on. > > One common trick is to make you open the eventviewer (eventvwr) which > is some kind of logging feature. A typical conversation would go like > > "Do you see any errors, sir?" > "Yes, I do." > "Can you count them for me?" > "Oh, there are many of them!" > "Like ten? Or a hundred?" > "Definitely several hundreds." > "Oh dear, that is really bad." > etc. > > (Errors in the eventviewer are often harmless.) > > Actually, I did continue after they started asking for money and at > least twice I convinced them I paid (once by giving them a fake credit > card number that happened to be valid and once by convincing them I > would pay later). What happened was that they ran a few free > security/performance tools and that's it. > > Note: don't try this at home unless you know what you're doing and have > a virtual machine set up for the purpose. There have been reports of > support scammers who started deleting files of people who didn't want to > pay. The new practise, apparently, from a freelance mailing list I'm on, is to instruct you to install screen mirroring/remote desktop software giving them control of your machine - that way they can install their own malware and even charge you for it. Really nasty. ..also I can confirm that they get really angry and pretty obscene in their insults if you start laughing at their poor grasp of computer networking. I got quite an earful after stringing him along for a few minutes. A. -- Aaron J Trevena, BSc Hons http://www.aarontrevena.co.uk LAMP System Integration, Development and Consulting -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG https://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq