My wife called me at work yesterday. She was very upset and thought she had a serious problem. A gentleman-for lack of a better term usable on this forum- called saying he was from a Canadian Service Center for our Internet provider. He said our computer was contacting them with a continuous stream of error messages which was causing damage to their system. If this did not stop immediately all damages caused would be billed to us. She said he was very hard to understand and had an Arab or Indian accent. He then told her the best way to proceed was fer her to allow him remote access to our computer, where he would fix the problem, but he would need a credit card authorization to bill us.
Shaken, she told him to call back at 6PM, then called me. It took me fifteen minutes to calm the Mrs. down and get her to almost, but not quite, believe the call was a scam. She shutoff the computer and disconnected the power so things would be safe until I got home!
Lo and behold, at 5:50 PM our thick accented "Canadian" called back and spewed his schtick to me all the while I replied to him in my best fake Indian accent! I kept claiming we did not own a computer as I felt it was Satan's technology. After five minutes of trying to screw with this foreign scammer, I finally told him I wasn't stupid enough to fall for a scam that lame and to stick the phone in his (can't say here).
Not to be deterred he called back again today.
I reported this to Verizon's fraud unit. They said over 800,000 complaints about this scam have been logged nationwide in the past month. Nothing anyone can do since all calls are via satellite from overseas. The Verizon rep said since I gave the scammer a hard time, I would likely continue to receive the calls. Great, by the time I'm done, they will probably call a Jihad on me.
Shaken, she told him to call back at 6PM, then called me. It took me fifteen minutes to calm the Mrs. down and get her to almost, but not quite, believe the call was a scam. She shutoff the computer and disconnected the power so things would be safe until I got home!
Lo and behold, at 5:50 PM our thick accented "Canadian" called back and spewed his schtick to me all the while I replied to him in my best fake Indian accent! I kept claiming we did not own a computer as I felt it was Satan's technology. After five minutes of trying to screw with this foreign scammer, I finally told him I wasn't stupid enough to fall for a scam that lame and to stick the phone in his (can't say here).
Not to be deterred he called back again today.
I reported this to Verizon's fraud unit. They said over 800,000 complaints about this scam have been logged nationwide in the past month. Nothing anyone can do since all calls are via satellite from overseas. The Verizon rep said since I gave the scammer a hard time, I would likely continue to receive the calls. Great, by the time I'm done, they will probably call a Jihad on me.
