Tech Support Scam

[Lemtea]

Hello everyone 

I recently received a call from a man who claimed to be from a company called VT support. The man disused the usual you have discovered a virus on your pc please pay us x$ for our remote support in order to remove it. I then calmly asked the man to what the name of his company was again (didn't quite catch it the first time) and he proceeded to 'sir are you there' in an aggravated tone (his dialler must have dropped out or something) then hung up. Anyway after this I searched up VT support and found their website which appears to be pretty convincing, beware of these guys. Wish I could have messed around with him more. 

[Spotty]

The "Your computer is infected we need to fix it" calls are well documented scams, so I'm not sure what else you were expecting?

You'd be better off telling your friends and family about this scam. Make sure people like your parents or grandparents who may not be tech savvy are aware that such calls are always scams. No company will call you up to tell you that your computer has an error or virus, ever.
 

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Remote access scams

Remote access scams try to convince you that you have a computer or internet problem and that you need to buy new software to fix the problem.

How this scam works

The scammer will phone you and pretend to be a staff member from a large telecommunications or computer company, such as Telstra, the NBN or Microsoft. Alternatively they may claim to be from a technical support service provider.

They will tell you that your computer has been sending error messages or that it has a virus. They may mention problems with your internet connection or your phone line and say this has affected your computer's recent performance. They may claim that your broadband connection has been hacked.

The caller will request remote access to your computer to ‘find out what the problem is’.

The scammer may try to talk you into buying unnecessary software or a service to ‘fix’ the computer, or they may ask you for your personal details and your bank or credit card details.

The scammer may initially sound professional and knowledgeable—however they will be very persistent and may become abusive if you don't do what they ask.

You don't have to be a Telstra or Microsoft customer to be called by these scammers. You don’t even have to own a computer!

https://www.scamwatch.gov.au/types-of-scams/attempts-to-gain-your-personal-information/remote-access-scams

[Christophe Corazza]

I'm still waiting for someone to call me so I can play along for a while and have a little fun.

[Lemtea]

2 minutes ago, Spotty said:

The "Your computer is infected we need to fix it" calls are well documented scams, so I'm not sure what else you were expecting?

 

https://www.scamwatch.gov.au/types-of-scams/attempts-to-gain-your-personal-information/remote-access-scams

I knew from the get go it was a scam but I am more just impressed by their website which looks completely legitimate to the untrained eye.  

[Master Disaster]

True story: About 10 years ago a friend of mine bought himself an all singing all dancing top of range PC (I don't remember exact specs but I do remember he paid almost £1000 for an Intel QX9650), it was the first PC he bought in parts and had asked me to come over and build it.

 

We had cleared off his desk and had all the boxes laid out on his bed ready for us to start building when his phone rang.

 

It was Microsoft ringing to tell him his PC had phoned home and that he had a virus on it which was funny because his old PC had died 3 weeks earlier when his PSU gave up and took the board, CPU and ram with it.

 

After around an hour of us leading these tools up the garden path they finally clicked we were messing with them and hung up on us but boy was that a fun day.

[Lemtea]

3 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

True story: About 10 years ago a friend of mine bought himself an all singing all dancing top of range PC (I don't remember exact specs but I do remember he paid almost £1000 for an Intel QX9650), it was the first PC he bought in parts and had asked me to come over and build it.

 

We had cleared off his desk and had all the boxes laid out on his bed ready for us to start building when his phone rang.

 

It was Microsoft ringing to tell him his PC had phoned home and that he had a virus on it which was funny because his old PC had died 3 weeks earlier when his PSU gave up and took the board, CPU and ram with it.

 

After around an hour of us leading these tools up the garden path they finally clicked we were messing with them and hung up on us but boy was that a fun day.

Nice

I have been thinking about setting up a vm and just letting them loose to see what their 'qualified technicians' do, without giving them payment details of course. 

[Radium_Angel]

3 hours ago, Lemtea said:

Nice

I have been thinking about setting up a vm and just letting them loose to see what their 'qualified technicians' do, without giving them payment details of course. 

For extra fun, you can generate legitimate sounding but complete fake CC numbers, (there are sites online to help you do this for DB testing purposes), and spend hours having fun as they try to validate the info.

[AskTJ]

3 hours ago, Christophe Corazza said:

I'm still waiting for someone to call me so I can play along for a while and have a little fun.

IKR, no one calls me. I normally search up "Tech Support *Country" Number" and wait until someone picks up. Waste of time, but hey, why not?

[Sir Asvald]

Happened to me couple of days ago. I messed around. I was able get his name. I should have saved it.. he was using Windows 7 with a SIP application. 

[Christophe Corazza]

4 hours ago, AskTJ said:

IKR, no one calls me. I normally search up "Tech Support *Country" Number" and wait until someone picks up. Waste of time, but hey, why not?

 

I literally always have a honeypot ready just in case 

However, yet to this day, I'm still wainting for the scammers 

[Christophe Corazza]

3 hours ago, Sierra Fox said:

i would like to think that no one on this forum would fall for such a scam. in my line of work i hear enough about people getting scammed by these, which is sad because if people keep falling for them then they will keep doing it

 

Indeed. Due to people's ignorance about this scam, they agreed to whatever the scammer tells them to do. Their scams are based on a combination of aggressive sales tactics, lies and half-truths, and from stories that I've heard, they are getting more convincing every time.

And trying to shut them down is like playing Whac-a-Mole, where for every suppressed scammer, one or more new pop up.

[Radium_Angel]

3 hours ago, Christophe Corazza said:

And trying to shut them down is like playing Whac-a-Mole

Considering most (all?) are based in countries like India where the local authorities are bribed to look the other way, it's pointless to try to shut them down without State involvement.

 

[Christophe Corazza]

3 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

Considering most (all?) are based in countries like India where the local authorities are bribed to look the other way, it's pointless to try to shut them down without State involvement.

 

Indeed, and I'm afraid that state authorities have other more important things on their hands.

[Crunchy Dragon]

Remember kids, real tech support does not call you first.

[Jtalk4456]

i've gotta give them credit, they made a NICE looking website! I wanna take that design and use it for something

[Crunchy Dragon]

Now I really want to pull together a VM to screw with these guys...

[thedude4bides]

12 hours ago, Christophe Corazza said:

I'm still waiting for someone to call me so I can play along for a while and have a little fun.

You do not have to wait, my friend.  The numbers are all over the web if you want to call them.

[GDRRiley]

12 hours ago, Christophe Corazza said:

I'm still waiting for someone to call me so I can play along for a while and have a little fun.

I have had it twice but I don't have any VMs set up to let them play in.

[Crunchy Dragon]

1 minute ago, GDRRiley said:

I have had it twice but I don't have any VMs set up to let them play in.

You could easily run Windows XP or maybe 7 in a VM.

[GDRRiley]

1 minute ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

You could easily run Windows XP or maybe 7 in a VM.

I could but it requires some setup 

[Crunchy Dragon]

1 minute ago, GDRRiley said:

I could but it requires some setup 

Setup that's worth it if you ever get bored

[Christophe Corazza]

16 minutes ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

Now I really want to pull together a VM to screw with these guys...

 

That's what's called a 'honeypot' trap 

YouTube has several movies of people setting up honeypots to mess around with these guys. Hilarious! 

 

I've been waiting patiently for the moment that one of them calls... but up till now to no avail

[Crunchy Dragon]

1 minute ago, Christophe Corazza said:

 

That's what's called a 'honeypot' trap 

YouTube has several movies of people setting up honeypots to mess around with these guys. Hilarious! 

 

I've been waiting patiently for the moment that one of them calls... but up till now to no avail

Heard of Lewis's Tech?

 

Literally all he does is play around with tech support scammers in VMs.

[thedude4bides]

There's tons of videos of people messing with these scammers on YT.  This guy actually put a virus on their machines after letting them remote into his.  Pure genius.

 

 

[Christophe Corazza]

5 minutes ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

Heard of Lewis's Tech?

 

No I haven't heared about him. But looking at his YouTube channel I should really check him out. He takes the "scamming the scammers" really a step further