Windows Technical Care?

[Kingsland Codger]

I received a phone call this morning from someone claiming to be from Windows Technical Care. When asked, he told me Windows Technical Care was run from Stockton USA but that he was calling from India. I'm not at all clear on technical issues but I think he wanted me to go online and do something to stop spyware.

 

I have a paid-for and up-to-date version of AVG Internet Security and I concluded this was not a genuine phone call and so I asked him to email me whatever was required. He said he couldn't do this but gave me a URL of wtcare.com

 

Has anyone ever heard of Windows Technical Care?

 

Many thanks in advance

[S-Clarke]

It's a scam, hang up on them straight away and do not entertain any of their 'questions'. Although I'd imagine it'll be fun to wind them up.

 

http://money-watch.co.uk/7118/beware-of-the-windows-phone-scam

[Weston Saint]

I receive a call at least once a week.

 

I let them explain and then ask them if they like acting fraudulently. That starts off a "what do you mean" conversation.

 

I then tell them my computer is not infected. It has many error messages within the operating system (unseen unless you know where to look) but that does not slow down the operating system and it is perfectly normal. BT my provider has confirmed that.

 

I then ask them again why they are acting fraudulently. Windows do not give them authority and they will never ring a customer.

 

They end up putting the telephone down on me.

 

If they are not trying to gain access to your operating system they are trying to charge you to clean up an operating system that does not need cleaning.

[trousers]

Keep them on the line as long as possible. After about 10 minutes say: "Ok, I've got what I need". They say: "What's that?". You say: "The police installed a call tracer on my line a couple of weeks ago and it takes up to 10 minutes to track down the source of the call. It's just tracked you down and the police and/or Interpol will be contacting you shortly"

 

Funnily enough, I don't get as many of these calls as I used to...

[Kingsland Codger]

Many thanks for these responses which have confirmed my initial fears.

 

Thank you also to the Mods for having this forum where a question such as mine can be cleared up swiftly.

[ecuk268]

I had 2 calls in quick succession on Thursday evening.

 

The first was a Eastern lady saying that I had a problem with my Sky installation (I haven't got Sky) and the second was similar to the OP.

 

I informed him that I'd been in IT for over 30 years and that he was talking ********.

 

He hung up.

[sperm_john]

my dad who's useless with computers had this and nearly went through the motions with them, i face palmed but thankfully the old boy had the sense to bail out half way through saying it was 'fishy' lol

[Barry the Badger]

It amazes me that anybody falls for this. Somebody at work put all their details into one of those fake bank emails, why are people so dim?

[Saint_Jonny]

Pretty sure they only ring people of a certain age, they know that they are more likely to get away with it that way. My grandad has had several of these phone-calls, luckily he's a cynical old sod so he tells them to **** off.

[timebomb]

Pretty sure they only ring people of a certain age, they know that they are more likely to get away with it that way. My grandad has had several of these phone-calls, luckily he's a cynical old sod so he tells them to **** off.

 

I have had a couple of these calls and I work in IT and although I'm 54 don't consider myself "of a certain age". I take great pleasure telling them to **** off!

[Sheaf Saint]

I've had a few of these calls. The first time I just hung up. Second time I got a bit angry, then hung up. Now if they call I just play along with them for a little bit before telling them that I almost certainly know a lot more about IT than they do and ask how they sleep at night knowing that they are just preying on vulnerable and gullible people to make money.

 

The way it works (as I found out after researching a little on other people's experiences) is that they ask you to go to logmein rescue or similar and get remote access to your computer. They then proceed to go into the event viewer and convince you that all the little exclamation mark warnings are a sign that there is a serious infection on your OS and that they will need to install some software to remove it. The software they install makes it look like there is a virus on your machine so they tell you they need to charge you £75 for the full version which basically just removes the app they installed in the first place.

 

Sadly many (mostly elderly people) have fallen for it, and because they always withhold their number and refuse to tell you where they are calling from, there is no comeback if you get scammed. Some of them will direct you to a seemingly professional website (like this one) which would look really authentic to someone whose knowledge of IT is how to turn on a PC and open a web-browser, but to anybody remotely tech savvy they are blatantly fraudulent.