Tech support scam

[Fallout]

So basically I woke up this morning to my dad on the phone with some indian guy from some company called alien touch (after Google search the first 3 results are pages talking about how they are scammers) anyway my dad went to some site, installed some exe to allow remote access and also typed www.support.me (looks dodgy wouldn't go there) into run. I'm guessing their computer is now full of shit so I downloaded and started running Malwarebytes, is there anything else I can do to try and get rid of w/e has been put onto their computer or is it just a nuke everything from orbit and reinstall windows deal.

[Ralara]

nuke it

if he has any financial info there, I highly suggest he changes any potentially compromised passwords / bank details etc.

[Fallout]

Now for the fun task of convincing my parents

[Rudolf Miller]

nuke it

if he has any financial info there, I highly suggest he changes any potentially compromised passwords / bank details etc.

This.

A confirmed remote access virus is always best eliminated through a COMPLETE wipe of the C:

[Rudolf Miller]

Now for the fun task of convincing my parents

Tell them terrorists will have fun watching everything they do on the internet if your American.

[Fallout]

English maybe if I replace terrorists with Frenchmen.

edit: Apparently it was fairly easy, not as dumb as I thought

[Cosmin]

Nuke everything (not only C: imho, stuff can run amok everywhere) and also check stuffs on external stuff that's been plugged in (i.e. flash drives, external HDDs). Also reset banking details - passwords, IDs; I would ask for another token too. Keep a close watch on accounts during the following months and/or change the credit/debit cards - if they sniff your secure code it's big trouble.

[Fallout]

Yeah it seems like that's what I'm gonna do, thanks for the replies.

[evil edna]

whats your dads phone number? i want to call him about this great deal i have on a credit card but i need some details first

[The Monkeysphere]

Hey, has your dad heard about this great renal investment scheme? He could make millions with my help.


Call me, maybe

[whispous]

It astonishes me how quickly some people will do whatever some indian on the phone tells them to do

[Krugerrand]

It astonishes me how quickly some people will do whatever some indian on the phone tells them to do

brb, perfecting Indian accent to make easy cash out of Fallout's folks.

[Fallout]

It astonishes me how quickly some people will do whatever some indian on the phone tells them to do

I was actually pretty shocked about how dumb he was to start doing what they told him to do. It seems like if it was any other kind of scam to do with anything other than computers he would of realized pretty fast but old people are bad at computers I guess.

[Joe Appleby]

Good thing the Indians have not bothered yet with learning German.

[Zekk Pacus]

It astonishes me how quickly some people will do whatever some indian on the phone tells them to do

I was actually pretty shocked about how dumb he was to start doing what they told him to do. It seems like if it was any other kind of scam to do with anything other than computers he would of realized pretty fast but old people are bad at computers I guess.

This scam has been going for a year or more and seems to have a pretty good hitrate. We speak to a couple of people a month or more who've been hit by it.

Problem is most people are completely clueless in how to perform at least basic maintenance on their PC, so if someone phones them up sounding knowledgeable, their brain goes into slobbering st. bernard mode and they do whatever the man on the phone tells them.

[Grendelfreak]

Does anyone know how our Indian friends decide who to call? Lately they have been calling the home phone at least a couple of times a week.

[Lana Torrin]

Does anyone know how our Indian friends decide who to call? Lately they have been calling the home phone at least a couple of times a week.

They buy their phone lists from online stores and other junk. You know all those sites with privacy policies that say they can sell your info? This is what most of them are talking about.

[Luna Lee]

Does anyone know how our Indian friends decide who to call? Lately they have been calling the home phone at least a couple of times a week.

They buy their phone lists from online stores and other junk. You know all those sites with privacy policies that say they can sell your info? This is what most of them are talking about.

Actually it's far easier to randomly generate numbers and have an autodialler do the work. Area codes are fixed so generally all you need to do is generate the last few digits. For a London number for instance you have areacode (0207/8) - exchangecode - four-random-numbers-from-0-to-9. If you create 10 combinations of the last bit and try ringing them at least one is going to be a legitimate number.

[Lana Torrin]

Does anyone know how our Indian friends decide who to call? Lately they have been calling the home phone at least a couple of times a week.

They buy their phone lists from online stores and other junk. You know all those sites with privacy policies that say they can sell your info? This is what most of them are talking about.

Actually it's far easier to randomly generate numbers and have an autodialler do the work. Area codes are fixed so generally all you need to do is generate the last few digits. For a London number for instance you have areacode (0207/8) - exchangecode - four-random-numbers-from-0-to-9. If you create 10 combinations of the last bit and try ringing them at least one is going to be a legitimate number.

Yeah but then you dont get to do the whole profile thing and greet them by name.

[Luna Lee]

You don't have to. Most of these calls start off with 'Hello I'm suchandsuch from your internet service provider' or 'Hello I'm suchandsuch from Microsoftware' and then go onto say 'Our systems show that your computer has virus' on it'. They then get them to open event viewer and claim that the errors shown proves this and that they can fix it by doing remote support.