Windows Service Centre

The Fraudsters are at it again!

I had a call yesterday from “Windows Service Centre” from a chap with an almost incomprehensible Asian accent.  This was not their first call to me and I  that they were an outfit similar to “Quick Resolve”.  I allowed the conversation to continue and pretended to be ignorant. 

The usual scenario followed: I was talked through launching event viewer, where they showed me all the ‘errors’.  He was very insistent that I didn’t click on any of the errors, implying that that would cause serious damage to my computer*.  What was laughable was the suggestions that Event Viewer was forwarding these errors to them!  Having explained how ‘damaging’ these errors were.  He then directed me to the site for Team Viewer http://www.teamviewer.com.  This is a legitimate piece of software which I myself use on occasions for working remotely on clients PCs, but no way was I going to take it so far as to give them access to my PC

So being sunny day I asked what the weather was like in India.  He claimed not to understand the question. I repeated it a couple of times and then asked – what was point of speaking with him if he couldn’t understand me?  He himself then terminated the conversation, but I had wasted some of him time.

There is (or rather used to be) a nice video displaying the scam on “Computer Active”

 If you do get a call from them – and are even ‘stung’ as result, submit a report to  Action Fraud

*In fact clicking on an error message merely provides further information.  This may be the fact that a mailbox was briefly ‘off-line’.  Of course THEY wouldn’t want me realising that the error were not ‘critical’.