Frustrating internet help

This morning as I tried to log on, I got a message that I had a virus and to call this number.

I did, and got a person I could hardly understand. sounded Indian.

Anyway, after a few phone calls back and forth and complaints that I could not understand what they were saying and ignored requests for some one who spoke North American English. We finally did get things squared away but it took hours due to the communication problem.

I think this has been mentioned before. I just had to rant.

I will say, they were patient with my complaints.

I've been told, If they give you a menu option for Spanish, select that, then apologise for punching the wrong button. Not many Indians speak Spanish, so the help desk is often in North America somewhere, and most of the Spanish speakers have passable English.

I've never tried it in Canada with French, because often as not, you get a native French speaker up here after selecting English anyway...

Did they charge you money? Because that's a pretty widespread scam that's going around right now.

Did you try turning it off and back on again?

Sounds scammy to me

I had one of those scams start with a phone call claiming to be from the Windows support center and saying my computer had been hacked. I decided to troll him a bit and asked which computer he was calling about. He couldn't do much more than say, "The Windows computer!"

So, I told him there were several computers at my house running Windows, and to specify which one had been hacked. This threw him for a loop. Finally, he ended up completely breaking character and screaming profanities at me. And, astonishingly, he stayed on the line thinking that I would still believe he was the real thing! I was amused to see I'd managed to annoy him more than he'd annoyed me.

Silly Windows users!

In reply to MadScientistMatt:

Ahhh -- but were they calling you about "The Windows computer" --or-- was it about "The Vindoes Combuter"?

orphancars wrote: In reply to MadScientistMatt: Ahhh -- but were they calling you about "The Windows computer" --or-- was it about "The Vindoes Combuter"?

More like the latter. At one point before he totally lost it, he said, "Do you understand English?" I gave the obvious answer: "Not with your accent."

SCAM, SCAM, you're getting SCAMMED!

If you gave them a credit card number, call your credit card company right away and tell them you might have a fraudulent charge on your card.

No money was exchanged nor a request.

If I had a nickel for every time someone tried to buy a greendot card for a scam, I could probably buy a pop, and that's just this month.

iceracer wrote: No money was exchanged nor a request.

Well that's good but they probably still took some sensitive info from you which could be used for identity-thefty things.

For example did you give them your email login info? That's the keys to the kingdom of most of your online accounts, and an easy way to attempt to scam friends and relatives from your email address.

Did you give them access to your PC via remote?

Seriously I would be changing all me credit cards and all my passwords and notifying all my friends and relatives that you were possibly hacked and to ignore all communications with you unless confirmed personally using some other method than email.

I am curious what the company called itself.

Your computer will never tell you to call a phone number. Ever.

it's hard to feel sorry for someone that voluntarily falls for such a simple scam...

it was my providers phone number for troubles. All is good.

novaderrik wrote: it's hard to feel sorry for someone that voluntarily falls for such a simple scam...

I wasn't asking for sympathy . Just complaining about the accent problem.

Everyone turned it into a scam.

Because when you get a popup saying "you have a virus, call this number" - that is a scam. Usually the malware itself. Usually gets injected through banner ads. Use an ad blocker.

iceracer wrote: it was my providers phone number for troubles. All is good.

iceracer wrote:

novaderrik wrote: it's hard to feel sorry for someone that voluntarily falls for such a simple scam...

I wasn't asking for sympathy . Just complaining about the accent problem. Everyone turned it into a scam.

I'm still pretty sure this was a scam. If a message popped up on your computer telling you to call a number and it wasn't a scam, as a computer security expert that would be a new development to me, so I'm interested in the outcome.

See also:

https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0346-tech-support-scams

http://www.scamwatch.gov.au/content/index.phtml/itemId/834379

Knurled wrote: Your computer will never tell you to call a phone number. Ever.

My computer might. It does bad things like making me look at those women who can't afford proper clothing.

GameboyRMH wrote:

iceracer wrote: it was my providers phone number for troubles. All is good.

iceracer wrote:

novaderrik wrote: it's hard to feel sorry for someone that voluntarily falls for such a simple scam...

I wasn't asking for sympathy . Just complaining about the accent problem. Everyone turned it into a scam.

I'm still pretty sure this was a scam. If a message popped up on your computer telling you to call a number and it *wasn't* a scam, as a computer security expert that would be a new development to me, so I'm interested in the outcome.

It's also trivial to see who someone's provider is if you look at their IP address, which is attached to everything. Malware can have a simple script that looks for Comcast/ATT/whoever and uses that data in the popup.

ISPs also don't snoop what data is flowing. They don't care what is being transferred to your computer, at least as long as net neutrality exists, and even then they aren't concerned with what so much as where.

These are the reasons why everyone feels it was a malware scam.

No victim here.

All is good.

I think I know what happened.