Hi Chuk,Have had a few of these calls myself. On the first call...

Hi Chuk,

Have had a few of these calls myself. On the first call i basically told the guy to go away ( I may have added a profanity or two as a parting gesture ).

After hearing several of my friends having the same calls over the next few weeks I decided if i received another call i would allow the representative to guide me thru to where he wanted to make changes on my machine as I was curious to know exactly how this illegal call centre actually makes money...

Now i dont recommend doing this yourselves unless you are well versed in computer and internet technology as they continue to prompt you for information that comes up on your screen as they continue to guide you thru and there are definitely things you DO NOT want them to know in the areas they guide you ( eg : ip address ).

Also they appear to be reasonably well versed in IT and internet so just making up any info or numbers as you go along will most likely end up with them just hanging up as they know they have been caught ( happened with a friend of mine who is also IT savvy ).

Now, the particular person who rang myself advised that he was from Microsoft Tech Support and they had noticed a serious error on my machine.

I queried how he new this and he asked if i had ever seen a Microsoft box come up after an error asking if you wish to send this to Microsoft? I must also point out I was pretending to be an absolute novice with computers so when i advised "yes" he advised that Microsoft received one of my errors and are going thru fixing them for myself and other similar clients.

He then proceeded to guide me thru to a number of areas and it was quite easy in the end to ascertain exactly what his intention was. His aim was simple: to obtain my ip address and to switch on remote access privileges.

Now if anyone has had an IT issue at work and phoned into their IT helpdesk area then on occasions you may have had the IT guy ask you to do some steps so he can remotely access your machine. This is called remote access control and allows the user at the other end to take full control of your mouse and has the same authority / user account controls etc etc that you would normally have.

Obviously I didnt give him my correct IP address or allow remote access control but had he been able to do this he would have been able to access any and every file on my machine and upload any information to his own machine within seconds.
As an example of what he could do would be to do a search on the words "password", "bank", "money", "accounts", "tax", "address", "credit", etc etc and upload all these files to his own machine.

I think you all know what the end result of this would be when he now potentially has access to all your passwords, your banking and account details.

More importantly your full name, address and other items he would upload and unlike your accounts or credit cards where you can just cancel them, having access to your full name and address and other particulars now allows him to setup basically anything online using your full particulars which is VERY difficult to stop.


I must admit the Indian rep did give out a little indecipherable sound and hung up after I thanked him for showing me how their fraud works...unfortunately I didnt manage to get his number so i could call his team leader to thank him for his time and patience ...

Just a heads up, I know this might sound obvious to some but I have had a few people I know caught by these types of calls so if you have any reservations about any incoming phone call for any reason you should just politely ask for the particular persons name and number and call them back... obviously if their not willing to do this then best point of call is to just hang up.