Oh yes. It is a huge scam.
Oh, Email service by @Optimum.net in NJ area is down since 8:00 am this morning.
Scam. Period.
Yep, I would surrender my computer in a minute ... NOT. I have installed Windows 7 on many of my relative's computers over the last year or so, never once was I asked for a phone number.
Scientologists are in Clearwater but most of them don’t have foreign accents.
Yes its a scam. Microsoft doesn’t call anyone. heck I pay them and can’t get them to call me.
Scammers are using several well-known brands, including Microsoft, to fool people into believing that something is wrong with their computers. The scam typically unfolds in the following manner:
* A cold caller, claiming to be a representative of Microsoft, one of its brands or a third party contracted by Microsoft, tells the victim they are checking into a computer problem, infection or virus that has been detected by Microsoft.
* They tell the victim they can help and direct them to a website that then allows the scammers to take remote control of the computer.
* The cold caller will then spend some time on the computer trying to demonstrate where the ‘problems’ are and in the process convinces the victim to pay a fee for a service that will fix the computer.
“In reality, there is nothing wrong with their computer but the scammer has tricked the consumer into believing there is a problem and that paying the fee is the best way to get it fixed. Often they will also push the customer to buy a one year computer maintenance subscription.
“Don’t be fooled, Microsoft is not cold calling consumers in regards to malfunctioning PCs, viruses or any other matter.”
Sounds about legit as the Nigerian money transfer scam...../ S
Sounds familiar as my mother fell for it, she is 83. Had her report it as fraud and get a new credit card. She was too embarrassed to talk about it at first. I was hard getting the story till I told her, you want them doing it to others too?
The CID will show as being from Microsoft too. I called them when it happened to us. They say there is nothing they can do.
Yeah, that sounds like a new kind of scam that is on the rise. One form of it is fake debt collection actually. All they need is a list of names that go with correct phone numbers. They call and say you registered a product like Win7 and they need access to fix a problem, or that you own $200 and need to pay, etc, etc. Call 1000 people and some of them are bound to have registered Win 7 or owe some payday loan company a few bucks. Apparently the calls might actually originate overseas (Africa or India). The poor English is actually an asset. They either try to trick you (sound like foreign tech support) or bully you into giving them access or money. One of my staff actually got the debt collection version of this on his company mobile and put it on speaker so we could all hear.
A scam? That’s ok, I can fix it if you let me have control of your computer.
I have got this call in the past. Guy said he was from Microsoft and I had a virus.. lol
I ran the guy around, wasted his time, got as much info as i could from him and then gave him holy hell for daring to try to scam me. He cursed me out and hung up.
Mind had a thick indian accent.
Wait. What? You spent more than 15 seconds talking to this guy??
Did he offer you hope and change?
Clearwater is the World Hq of Scientology.
?
My first reaction to anything remotely like that is to run my AVG and my Malware Bytes and then Spybot for good measure. If it comes via a popup on the monitor then I do not cancel or otherwise click on it bu run all my antis. My wife got it as a phone call like that once and we ran all the antis. Malware Bytes got a load of “objects” after one such.
That is a definite scam. Microsoft doesn’t do that.
They tried this with me telling me they were responding to a request for help....I laughed at them and told em to get off of my phone because I do not use microsoft on my MAC
There’s one good way to greatly reduce the number of scammers calling you: don’t pick up the phone at all when you don’t recognize the number.
When you pick up the phone, you “reward” the scammer because he knows he has found a “live” number, and he will keep calling you so long as he thinks he has a chance to scam you.
If you don’t pick up, he’ll move on until he finds the next live number.