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[jester]

I wouldn't mind the whole social darwinism aspect of it if I wasn't the one who has to fix the computer :<

We had a guy come into our store to check if his computer had anything bad on it - Apparently someone called him from "Microsoft", saying that they'd detected a number of viruses on his computer and wanted to take control of it to make sure, just follow these directions... So he let him.

I kind of felt bad for the guy, but he wised up quickly enough to notice something was fishy and didn't install the anti-virus the caller wanted him to buy.  We didn't find anything on the computer with our scans, but that doesn't mean something isn't hiding in there.

Which just goes to show that some of these internet scam artists are either extremely good or laughingly incompetent.  I'm not sure which, but I'm sure the competent ones have real jobs and don't need to scam to make a living.

Ive worked for a few years in call centres, once you get the hang of it, it isnt hard to get info/get people to do some odd stuff.  Both in professional and personal situations.  Its really just a case of getting the tone of voice right, never asking anyone to swallow a camel and having a couple of simple bits of cover worked out, eg, if you have a phone book, you often have someones name (or at least last and initial) phone number and a basic address, its either evil as hell or just funny depending on what you do with it

[Aklyon]

swallow a camel?
Never heard that phrase before.

[jester]

Means make someone eat something huge all at once, instead you feed it to them in small bits, they eat the whole camel, but you dont try to cram the whole thing down their throat all at once.


  Basically you dont drop a big lie right on someone, its usually fairly obvious and crazy sounding, but if you can break it down into small parts that each sound rational, you have a fair chance they will swallow it

[Starver]

I like the Nigerian email scams, you can get some great replys from these guys.  However im very fucking pissy about the fact that I have an email address that is being bombarded with scams.  The problem? I only use it for sending out resumes.  So either one of the jobs ive applied for is a scam, or one of the people I have applied to have sold my email addr to a scammer. 

  The other issue is:  I am applying for jobs cause I dont have one, ergo I DONT HAVE ANY FARKING MONEY!!  WHAT DO THESE IDIOTS THINK THEY CAN GET OUT OF ME?

One of the online job-sites I use to search for something (I know which one, because I give a different contact email address to each and every place I register for) must have given my email address to a spammer.  What I received was very much wrongly aimed.  "Can your company offer a deal?  Would you like free exposure?  Would you like guarenteed [sic] new customers and the potential of more repeat customers?  Do you like Risk Free pro-active marketing?"

[jester]

Mine is more on the lines of the Nigerian scam, they say they have a job, needs only a few hours a week, internet access, well paid blah blah, check out our website, (looks legit) its for a russian/whoever fish/caviar/whatever importer, they are asking for a resume, nothing else as a start, so I go to a net cafe, start a new email accnt, link it to my new resume and blaze it off.  Get back an official looking reply saying I have been accepted and they need my bank details cause they need local bank accnt for transactions, as well as my salary, I would get 10% of all transactions.  Again, ALL THIS TROUBLE TO TRY AND SCREW PEOPLE WHO DONT HAVE JOBS, WE DONT HAVE ALOT OF CASH TO STEAL YOU IDIOTS.  I hope they liked the pics I sent them in return

[Heliman]

I wouldn't mind the whole social darwinism aspect of it if I wasn't the one who has to fix the computer :<

I agree with you, but I'll still fix it again if i'm getting paid to again.

All family gets charged a flat rate for me to fix their computers. It works wonders for my work ethic.


EDIT: It also sort of forces me to go through all my family's stuff like a total creeper. Phone sex websites suggested in your URLs, Uncle X? Cmon, you're so overweight you can't even reach that thing, and you're super religious too. If you ever try annoying me with a "masturbation is a sin" don't go thinking that I'm not going to use this against you.

[Starver]

We had a guy come into our store to check if his computer had anything bad on it - Apparently someone called him from "Microsoft", saying that they'd detected a number of viruses on his computer and wanted to take control of it to make sure, just follow these directions... So he let him.

My Dad (aged over 80, but normally pretty smart with computers) got a call from Microsoft, telling him that there was a problem with his Windows installation.  It apparently wasn't legitimate and at some point or other they said they'd "deactivate" the machine if he didn't buy a valid licence...

The guy at the other end managed to soft-soap him (got him into the usual Windows log viewer, one thing he didn't know about) and even got him to the stage of allowing a remote desktop, so that Dad could open up a notepad window in anticipation of typing "I agree to pay £90", or whatever they were going to ask him to do, and probably shortly afterwards he would have been asked to type in his payment details.  Thus (using proxies for the remote desktop component, probably) they could remain as anonymous even while they accrued payment details from their victims (to be used themselves, or sold on to others).  But by now (although some would say it took long enough, but they probably used a wedge of credulity, ramping up the situation subtly as the call went on) Dad had gotten suspicious, said he wanted to talk to someone who knew about such things (me... not wanting to blow my own trumpet).

Long story short, I got him to make sure the machine was turned straight off, and later that night (while off-line, to make sure) I scanned and probed and otherwise checked with a number of common and obscure security tools I regularly use to make sure there was absolutely no malware installed.  (Looks like they didn't get around to that, even if it had been part of their plan.)

But they even called back (I did suggest he should have told his telecoms provider, perhaps to get some evidence of where the call originated, but there's already issues there with bad tech support response) and tried to brow-beat him into buying a "proper licence".  Never mind the rage one guy (transferred onto from the previous soft-soapy one, when it was apparent Dad wasn't going to be a push-over) went into regarding the possibility that he could be talking to someone else... "Who can help you?  We can help you, nobody else can!  You must buy a valid licence!  If you do not, we will shut your computer down!"


Obviously I'm only getting bits of the story[1], but Dad's no push-over, so the initial hook must have been very persuasive, and they even had the hard-sell guy as back-up for when the target gets less cooperative, and I can imagine some people would get brow-beaten back into a state of cooperation.


[1] Like father, like son...  He tends to ramble.  Mind generally as sharp as a steel trap, but doesn't necessarily concentrate on the bits of information I would find most useful when passing on such information.

[FearfulJesuit]

Oh wait. How could I forget domain name placeholders?

[Duke 2.0]

 The worst ads I get sometimes pop up when I foolishly try looking for MSPA fanart on Google image search. Sometimes when I open a site with a decent fanart my whole browser closes and a popup tries to install some crap on my computer. I just ctrl+alt+delete the browser because I don't want to fuck around with misleading sites that just straight up try to install junk.

[Krath]

Since I have one computer used by the entire family, they're always going around downloading things which install viruses, download programs which mess up my Firefox, download 'emoticons for your instant messenger!', etc etc.

Luckily I'm computer savvy enough to uninstall most of this junk, and keep periodic restore points just in case. The Vista Total Security ad got on here twice though (The one that keeps interrupting everything you try to open with a bad copy of the Security Center, telling you to 'upgrade'), that thing is so persistent I downloaded Malwarebytes, let it run on full scan all night, then did ANOTHER scan just to make sure it was gone.

[Itnetlolor]

My sisters were quite the "stylish malware that gives you cute/fancy graphics" users as well. Nearly destroyed my mom's (at the time) new laptop in record time. I even warned everyone ahead of time about it, and did the usual scans and etc. to clean them off. And then they have their own machines, and I assume are doing the same things anyway despite my preparatory scan and immunizations. The machines bog down, they should learn their lessons by now, since I warned them again since they got their own brand new laptops. So far, I think they finally learned after just how bad off my mom's laptop is nowadays, despite my (and my brothers') efforts in fixing it.

I think after all the viruses and everything, my mom decided to convert to a Mac for reliability reasons.