I just received a call from an indian microsoft technician. He informed me that my PC is sending a ton of error messages to microsoft. Most likely it has been hacked, and he would help me by remoting in and fixing the problem for me. I just wonder… Is it my PopOs or my Manjaro PC that sends all this info to microsoft?
No, this is the first time something like this happened to me. i dont even get it. In my country mostly young people speak english. Isnt the target demographic the elderly?
Young people can (and often are) just as tech illiterate as the elderly. Just because you grew up with an iPad in your hands doesn’t mean you understand computers.
Oh for sure … I (18m) helped out teaching product design at my school last year (a class of 12 year olds). When asked to open an app, many of them searched it up on google or didnt know how. We gave them the name if the app and only about 2/30 people
I did the opposite one day when I was bored. Wasted an hour with them and a Linux VM. Think they were the ones that had my Dell service ID for a tablet I previously owned.
Yea l knew someone that gave remote access out to one of these scams. Couldn’t be sure they didn’t leave a reverse shell so we just formated the drive and reinstalled windblows.
My Silent Generation mom kept one of these guys on the phone for an hour before telling him she didn’t have a computer. Oh, the language he used afterwards!
Intentional trolling. My mom is sharp and well aware of internet scams. (Well, she was 15ish years ago, when she did this. She’s slowed down a bit of late, but she’s careful to check with one of us to make sure things are on the up-and-up.) She had a blast messing with him.
Depending on the type of VM it may not be completely sandboxed. Not worth it in my opinion. Also the police aren’t going to do squat. Hell they wouldn’t do anything even if they were down the street not to mention they’re on the other side of the earth.
Ehh. With enough digital forensics performed, you can generally get the information to authorities who will do something. For the average power user, this level of forensics is more than you’re going to be able to perform on your own. Simply having an IP address really isn’t sufficient. One unsubstantiated claim with an IP address doesn’t constitute enough evidence for them to take action, especially by someone who lives in a different country.
I only say so because I’ve seen the lengths some people have gone to in order to track down scammers and similar nefarious individuals and “companies”, and it is quite involved. Far more than what I would expect any single person to take on by themselves and frequently requiring extensive knowledge of the tools used, the vulnerabilities in those tools, and a fair amount of legwork (literally traveling around to collect information)… Which isn’t to mention a good amount of funding. At the end of the day, you’re just cutting off one of the heads of the Hydra, and they’ll be back in short order. There’s no shortage of morally bankrupt people willing to exploit and extort people with more money than sense, or at least, without enough technical understanding to know better. The problem isn’t exclusive to India, and with a billion people, there’s bound to be a disproportionate representation of scoundrels in that region whom are happy to rob anyone and everyone of their last dime just to get rich.
Bluntly, it’s more of a statement on humanity than it is of India, the Indian people, or their culture. These garbage people exist everywhere… Snake oil salesmen come to mind.
its a dangerous virus known as ‘Linux’ which can completely replace your precious Windows installation! be careful, there is a lot of propaganda pushing free (as in communism) software
True! Any hacker that wants into a system and has the skills will usually find a way in. I do my best to set up firewalls and encrypt important stuff but even that wouldn’t be enough if I was seriously targeted personally. I know that.
A friend’s neighbor just fell for this. She received a call from the “nicest” Microsoft tech and decided she’d let them into her PC. Within 10 minutes after hanging up she received a call from her bank asking if an $800 debit was valid. It took her weeks to clean up the mess.
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