Scam Phone Calls

[Newteach]

At the moment around our small town we are getting a number of those phone calls where some foreign caller says that they are calling to tell us we have a virus. After checking and cross checking our stories we all seem to have the same story, a short 5 digit phone number or unlisted number on caller I.D., a pause of a few seconds before anyone speaks, and a **** story. This is obviously a scam of some kind but my question is, is there anything 'Nasty' I can do back to them, maybe like press some combination of keys to make their exchange blow up, I have resorted to having a refs whistle by the phone now but there must be something better to stick it to these guys or at least make me feel better.

NT

[bot]

Report them?

AFAIK Telecom can see the number even if you can't.

[Jen]

They are doing the rounds here as well.

You could do what I did ...

I suddenly became the village idiot of computer users and it took him 6 mins to explain to me how to find my start button. Once I "managed" to find that, for some reason I couldn't find the control panel icon next. I also told him my operating system was "Office 2003".

At this point he said he had to go and ask his supervisor what to do when you had a 'missing' control panel icon and to please wait on the phone ... I hung up as soon as he put me on hold.

I felt those 6 mins were well spent wasting his time.

[Speedy Gonzales]

You can post on the site that's on the Herald site

Here http://www.nzherald.co.nz/technology...ectid=10725562.

It is a scam they get people to install something like Logmein. Get in then screw the system up. My sister's mate in oz got sucked in. Paid $250 for nothing.

I went in later with teamviewer. Whoever it was, they disabled everything to do with the error reporting. Disabled error reporting under the advanced tab, disabled the service etc

[Newteach]

So it sounds like the Ref's whistle down the phone line is the best for making me feel better then...lol

[bot]

They are doing the rounds here as well.

You could do what I did ...

I suddenly became the village idiot of computer users and it took him 6 mins to explain to me how to find my start button. Once I "managed" to find that, for some reason I couldn't find the control panel icon next. I also told him my operating system was "Office 2003".

At this point he said he had to go and ask his supervisor what to do when you had a 'missing' control panel icon and to please wait on the phone ... I hung up as soon as he put me on hold.

I felt those 6 mins were well spent wasting his time.

Or say "What start button? I just have a linux terminal"

[Cato]

Or say "What start button? I just have a linux terminal"

I've been waiting for them to call me just so I can say exactly

[lakewoodlady]

Tell them you've got a Mac, they really hate that.

LL

[bot]

Tell them you've got a Mac, they really hate that.

LL

Or DOS - "Hang on, how much memory do you want me to allocate first?"

[Jen]

Their first question is "Do you have a Windows computer"? If you want to cut the call short, then say no. If you want to have some fun ...