I just received a call from an indian microsoft technician. He informed me that my PC is sending a ton of error messages to microsoft. Most likely it has been hacked, and he would help me by remoting in and fixing the problem for me.
I just wonder... Is it my PopOs or my Manjaro PC that sends all this info to microsoft?
If it's sending information to Microsoft then it has clearly been hacked. Likely by Microsoft. It was very nice of that young man to break protocol and blow the whistle on this whole thing. You should send him an itunes gift card as a thank you.
These are the same people - CIA just outsourced their call center to India & they have to send all gift cards back to the CIA, you just cut out the middleman.
You reminded me of those YouTube vigilantes that troll Indian scammers. One installed the remote desktop app they use and let them access a honeypot linux machine just to mock their incompetence and confusion. Then proceeded to take control of their machine steal their data and wipe out their computers. Their reactions are hilarious. It's sad that a lot of very smart people are dragged into it by thugs that leverage debt and physical threats to force them into the scam call centers.
I ended up on a massive Whatsapp group populated primarily by Indian women after I took a content writing class a few years ago. Made several very good friends. I've asked them about the whole Indian scammer thing. One of them said she knows a few, and they do it because they literally don't have other options for employment. Which makes sense. Rampant, unfettered capitalism forces people to make decisions that go against their conscience for the sake of survival. I feel bad for scammers sometimes, other times I feel less charitable when they're scamming my dad...
It's always an excuse that criminals make - that they don't have any other options for employment. It's a shitty excuse when 95% of the country is employed and don't scam people. It's easy money for them, nothing more.
I've done a lot of thinking about the scam market, and there is no way it isn't some kind of "CIA is behind the cartels" situation.
Primary target? Elderly Americans.
Objective? Bring generational wealth to institutions.
FCC could stop the vast majority of this shit by using techniques similar to DKIM via VOIP to stop spoofing (STIR/SHAKEN). This problem is solved. Has been for a while.
I can only assume they don't drop the hammer because they can take a cut instead.
As much as a person could find a reason to feel sorry for them they unnecessarily verbally abuse people they are scamming and that was a choice they made. Their hands are not clean from playing a villain.
And escaping poverty by putting someone else in poverty …that’s the capitalist game. No ethics is part of the package. They are not victims.
I won free airline tickets once and was shocked and appalled when they said I COULDNT use them to go to the moon. I fought long and hard for the right to use those tickets the way I wanted but alas.
That might be even funnier, but there's still a chance they're proficient enough that they could cause problems once they realized what was happening. A VM would help mitigate the chances of that.
its a dangerous virus known as 'Linux' which can completely replace your precious Windows installation! be careful, there is a lot of propaganda pushing free (as in communism) software
No, this is the first time something like this happened to me. i dont even get it. In my country mostly young people speak english. Isnt the target demographic the elderly?
Young people can (and often are) just as tech illiterate as the elderly. Just because you grew up with an iPad in your hands doesn't mean you understand computers.
I did the opposite one day when I was bored. Wasted an hour with them and a Linux VM. Think they were the ones that had my Dell service ID for a tablet I previously owned.
A friend's neighbor just fell for this. She received a call from the "nicest" Microsoft tech and decided she'd let them into her PC. Within 10 minutes after hanging up she received a call from her bank asking if an $800 debit was valid. It took her weeks to clean up the mess.
Depending on the type of VM it may not be completely sandboxed. Not worth it in my opinion. Also the police aren't going to do squat. Hell they wouldn't do anything even if they were down the street not to mention they're on the other side of the earth.
Ehh. With enough digital forensics performed, you can generally get the information to authorities who will do something. For the average power user, this level of forensics is more than you're going to be able to perform on your own. Simply having an IP address really isn't sufficient. One unsubstantiated claim with an IP address doesn't constitute enough evidence for them to take action, especially by someone who lives in a different country.
I only say so because I've seen the lengths some people have gone to in order to track down scammers and similar nefarious individuals and "companies", and it is quite involved. Far more than what I would expect any single person to take on by themselves and frequently requiring extensive knowledge of the tools used, the vulnerabilities in those tools, and a fair amount of legwork (literally traveling around to collect information)... Which isn't to mention a good amount of funding. At the end of the day, you're just cutting off one of the heads of the Hydra, and they'll be back in short order. There's no shortage of morally bankrupt people willing to exploit and extort people with more money than sense, or at least, without enough technical understanding to know better. The problem isn't exclusive to India, and with a billion people, there's bound to be a disproportionate representation of scoundrels in that region whom are happy to rob anyone and everyone of their last dime just to get rich.
Bluntly, it's more of a statement on humanity than it is of India, the Indian people, or their culture. These garbage people exist everywhere.... Snake oil salesmen come to mind.
My Silent Generation mom kept one of these guys on the phone for an hour before telling him she didn't have a computer. Oh, the language he used afterwards!
Yea l knew someone that gave remote access out to one of these scams. Couldn't be sure they didn't leave a reverse shell so we just formated the drive and reinstalled windblows.