This one just happened to my wife, and unbelievably, I’d not heard of this until now. Apparently, this was big news in the UK a couple years back.
We were on the way home from Target, and my wife received a phone call from “Unavailable Number.” Upon picking up (sometimes we’re curious), dude on the other side said he was from the “Windows Security Center at Microsoft” (NICE!) and that we have been “downloading viruses and malware to our computer.” At this point, I picked up the phone and said – -“How do you know this? Do you have our IP address?” *CLICK*
3 seconds later, *RRRRRIIIING* and this time I pick it up, the same guy reads off the same script, and doesn’t notice that he’s talking to the same guy on the opposite end of the phone – – maybe we sound the same to our friends overseas (he was from India)?
Basically, dude wanted me to sit down in front of my computer, go to a website to download some software so he could remote control and “clean up all my viruses” – likely for a huge fee.
Now, if I were at home, I would totally have entertained this a bit more with my virtual machine, but alas, we were driving.
In any case, this seems to me like it is a newer thing here in the USA, or am I wrong? Tell your friends, colleagues (unless you hate them), associates, hide yo’ kids, hide yo’ wife, etc…be on the lookout for these jerks. To spur on some conversation, have you guys heard of this here in the US?
