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Microsoft IT Technology

That Virus Alert on Your Computer? Scammers in India May Be Behind It (nytimes.com) 98

Posted by msmash from the catch-me-if-you-can dept.
In India, a hub for tech support centers, a rise in scams forced Microsoft and the police to take action. From a report: You know the messages. They pop up on your computer screen with ominous warnings like, "Your computer has been infected with a virus. Call our toll-free number immediately for help." Often they look like alerts from Microsoft, Apple or Symantec. Sometimes the warning comes in a phone call. Most people ignore these entreaties, which are invariably scams. But one in five recipients actually talks to the fake tech-support centers, and 6 percent ultimately pay the operators to "fix" the nonexistent problem, according to recent consumer surveys by Microsoft.

Law enforcement authorities, working with Microsoft, have now traced many of these boiler rooms to New Delhi, India's capital and a hub of the global call-center industry. On Tuesday and Wednesday, police from two Delhi suburbs raided 16 fake tech-support centers and arrested about three dozen people. Last month, the Delhi authorities arrested 24 people in similar raids on 10 call centers. In Gautam Budh Nagar, one of the suburbs, 50 police officers swept into eight centers on Tuesday night. Ajay Pal Sharma, the senior superintendent of police there, said the scammers had extracted money from thousands of victims, most of whom were American or Canadian.
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That Virus Alert on Your Computer? Scammers in India May Be Behind It More

That Virus Alert on Your Computer? Scammers in India May Be Behind It

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  • This is news for nerds? (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 29, 2018 @10:34AM (#57720332)

    Seriously? More like news for the nursing home.

    • Re:This is news for nerds? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Killall -9 Bash ( 622952 ) on Thursday November 29, 2018 @10:38AM (#57720346)
      More like news from 15 years ago.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by pesho ( 843750 )
      To some degree it is. These scam shops are getting more sophisticated in their phishing. They seem to have up-to-date information on the people they are trying to scam. I recently got a call on my cell phone from one such shop. I was bored so I played along. It wasn't a robocall that was dialing a random phone number. They had my name and current street address. It would seem they had their hands on the records of a business or public agency that I have dealt with recently and used them in a very targeted w

  • Slime (Score:5, Informative)

    by ilsaloving ( 1534307 ) on Thursday November 29, 2018 @10:40AM (#57720354)

    I #%^&@$%ing hate those things, cause it invariably resutls in a paniced call from family urgently insisting on my help. Especially when it makes that obnoxious beeping noise.

    Jail isn't good enough for these slime.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sconeu ( 64226 )

      My GF got one of those. She sent them money and they sent her a flash drive to "fix" the issue.

      Fortunately, she asked me for help doing the install of whatever shitware they sent her, and I told her to get rid of the flash drive, and (since I'm not a mac guru) take her mac to the genius bar and have them check it out for any malware.

    • Teach everybody in your family how to use Task Manager to kill the browser task(s) until it stops. That's the PC version of "I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure!"

      • ROFLMAO.

        That requires a minimum level of computer-savvy-ness that said family members do not have. If so much as a single window is in a different position than expected, I get a phone call. Moving them to Macs has helped out a phenominally, but these are the kind of people that Apple was thinking of when they decided not to implement 2 button mice.

  • Ducts r us (Score:4, Funny)

    by AndyKron ( 937105 ) on Thursday November 29, 2018 @10:55AM (#57720420)
    Warning! The heating ducts in your computer need cleaning. Your files are stuck in the dirt. Call us now!

  • How to recognize this type of scam (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 29, 2018 @10:55AM (#57720424)

    It's easy to recognize these type of scammers.

    They purport to be from Apple or Microsoft and offer to fix computer problems for payment.

    Here's how you can distinguish these as fake calls:

    Neither Apple nor Microsoft will ever fix any computer problem for any amount of money, ever.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mspohr ( 589790 )

      Neither Apple nor Microsoft will ever fix any computer problem for any amount of money, ever.

      I think that's the problem.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by djbckr ( 673156 )

        Neither Apple nor Microsoft will ever fix any computer problem for any amount of money, ever.

        Well, now - we use Apple products in our home, and we choose to have AppleCare on our purchases. It doesn't add much to the cost of the products, but we've saved well more in repairs than what we've paid in AppleCare costs. My older MacBookPro bit the dust just before my AppleCare ran out, and they replaced the entire motherboard. I essentially got a new (older) computer. I still use it.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by mspohr ( 589790 )

          Apple is much better than Microsoft in that they will actually fix stuff and they are much more resistant to viruses.
          I should have left Apple out of the quote.
          Microsoft software is the problem. I don't know why people keep buying and trying to use their stuff.
          I gave up on Microsoft after the Windows ME fiasco (yes, I am old) and have used Linux, MacOS and ChromeOS since and never had a virus problem (or fear).

        • But have they ever called you up out of the blue and offered to clean up the virus that just appeared on your computer a minute before?

        • I prefer laptops that *DON'T* just randomly die...

    • Neither Apple nor Microsoft will ever fix any computer problem for any amount of money, ever.

      I find this witty. Were trying to be witty?

    • My mother has been caught in this multiple times. I keep trying to explain to her than Microsoft will never phone her up, and she nods her head and agrees but still something happens. I also have to say that no one in the world is going to voluntarily help her on her computer for free, and she nods but I can tell she doesn't really believe me and just thinks I am too cynical.

      Once she realized something might be wrong so she requested a refund (they sold her a commercial version of some Symantec software),

  • News for grandparents, stuff from the 90's.

  • Well.... duh !! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ripvlan ( 2609033 ) on Thursday November 29, 2018 @11:07AM (#57720500)

    Who knew!!! - a scam that uses a call center *might* come from India?! Let me say... "duh!" or as my kid says "dUuuUh!"

    But I'm glad to see that authorities are getting better/faster at tracking them down and closing them (i.e. actually doing something about it).

    One of the fascinating pieces of this is the technology used. The honeypots are quite sophisticated - including VoIP #'s that receive the calls. It is interesting what they "listen" for and how they correlate the calls. They track the ambient sounds to figure out which calls originate from the same call center (obviously the caller-id is fake). And then the honeypot PCs that are downloading the exploits are doing some cool things too.

    We could use a whole story on just the technology. The podcast "Reply All" has covered some of it. Stories on the honeypot PCs is harder to find though (IMHO).

  • That water in the ocean? It may be wet! (Score:3, Informative)

    by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Thursday November 29, 2018 @11:14AM (#57720530)

    Tomorrow on news for nerds, how to count to 10 with Slashdot. All the difficult things you totally didn't know before now. We unravel the mysteries of the universe! Fire? Turns out it is hot!. Ice? Well that actually is cold to the touch. The colour of the sky? Well we can't answer every question here, otherwise what incentive do you have to learn new things tomorrow.

    So join us tomorrow where we answer all those difficult questions right here on Slashdot. The news site for the edumakated.

  • ... shut down the tech support site. Undoubtedly, someone will turn it back on again.

  • Couldn't possibly be an Indian. They are a very kind people.

    Had to be a Russian! Those are nasty people.

    Just watch CNN and you will see.

    PS: MY toaster didn't work this morning and Putin left me a note saying he broke it on purpose!

  • What is the profile of the people who fall for such scams? The popups - well, if you are not computer-savvy, I can understand. But, the phone? Somebody calls you, unsolicited, claiming to be So-and-So, and you just end up giving them your money? Really?
    • There is a sucker born every minute. Unfortunately, the rest of us make it too easy for these scammers to find them. As long as there are a healthy number of suckers out there (just .01% = 700,000 people), these scammers will never quit. Laws won't stop them. Blockers won't stop them. Do Not Call lists will not stop them. As long as they get more money out of the scam than they have to invest in it, they will do it (kind of like Bitcoin miners). The rest of us have to make it extremely expensive for the sca

  • Best defense is an offense (Score:3)

    by DaMattster ( 977781 ) on Thursday November 29, 2018 @12:20PM (#57720888)
    I love it when these guys call me with that ominous warning that I've been infected with a computer virus. I play the very basic, naive computer user (with a short term memory problem) and try to waste as much time with these guys as possible. I use an incredibly high pitched, slow, whiny voice and ramble on and on about things outside of computers. I do as much to frustrate them as I can. When it is finally played out, I reveal that I am running OpenBSD, they get pissed off, cuss met out, and then hang up. That's 30 minutes less that they can devote to stealing someone's identity and money and I get a good belly laugh.
  • I hate that. I yell "scam" and hang up and the police can only do a useless warning not to agree to what the phone caller says.

  • "You know the messages. They pop up on your computer screen with ominous warnings like, "Your computer has been infected with a virus. Call our toll-free number immediately for help.""

    I don't know them, and it's not because I don't use Windows. I only see then on websites sometimes, but I take it that is not what is meant here.

    I feel left out.

  • I use to get calls like this about 5 years ago. I answered one and when the person with a heavy India accent said "Hi, my name is Chuck." I knew that this person just lied to me and that everything they were about to tell me was also a lie. Being a bit bored I decided to play along. The following is an approximate script of what followed:

    Chuck: I'm a Microsoft Technician and our servers have detected a virus on your computer.
    Me: Really, which one?
    Chuck: Lets start with your main Windows computer.
    Me:
  • I'm not seeing anything we didn't know literally 20 years ago. Entire secondary industries of people scaming indian and african sammers have arrisen. You can watch dudes call them and waste their time for hours every day.
  • My dumbshit ex was actually stupid enough to call them, then call me on another phone asking what do to. I told her to immediately turn the computer off and hang up on them! Then I had to teach my ex and her adopted daughter how to kill the browser task using Task Manager, which is the only sure way to escape a browser takeover.

  • No shit. Even senior senior citizens know it's them.

  • the scammers had extracted money from thousands of victims, most of whom were American or Canadian.

    Then why India cares? It cost taxpayer money to relief wealthier countries

  • ...posting? This was old news 10 or 15 years ago.

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