Scammers

[ps_bond]

...how I despise them.

I've just had a phone call from a foreign-sounding call centre claiming to be "24/7 PC Care" informing me that according to their weblink I am experiencing problems with my PC.

For those who aren't familiar how this script goes, the next step is to persuade the victim to download a trojan to "fix" all these problems for you. There's a few different examples around, but they've got a variety of behaviours - keyloggers to grab passwords, botnet clients to use to attack other systems, advertising fake virus removal sw, that kind of stuff. Not really something you want on your system and possibly worse in that they get you to do it yourself.

The script didn't get that far on this occasion and they may be a little deafer than they started the day. I could have strung them along, but I wasn't in the mood.

This has been a public service announcement for all those who don't read security bulletins for fun & profit

[Dennis]

Well here's something different: yesterday I got a text saying that the weather is set to worsen at the week end, so if I have an accident, be sure to phone....
Dennis.

[abyjem]

I hate them too and wish there was some way to catch the blighters and lock them up. A friend of ours got caught with the PC one - and he's an ex copper! He's not very savvy where computers are concerned so had no idea it was a scam. Thankfully he told me that day and I made him phone his bank and cc company to alert them. He had to has his PC completely re-configured but at least he only lost £75 - could have been a lot worse.

[caroleallen]

I'm inundated with those sort of calls and also people asking me to advertise in their publication or online. I did get caught out once when I stupidly signed up to advertise with an online thing, which was free for a month and then I could cancel it. I intended to cancel it but of course forgot and got done for £400. That was a very hard lesson learned and I wouldn't fall for it again.

[teatowell]

If you haven't already done it, register your numbers (landline and mobiles) with the telephone preference service. This may help to cut nuisance calls but takes about a month to get put in place.

[ps_bond]

I'm glad you qualified that with "may"... Ex-directory and registered with TPS and it has made no difference. Paying heed to the TPS list is unfortunately not obligatory, so it's a bit of a paper tiger.