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Comment by roflaway | Hacker News Reader

Throwaway account because I just shared this story with a buddy of mine:

I, too, have received these "Dell" tech support calls and angrily yell at them as I hang up within 15seconds.

Lately though, I received a bombardment of calls (15 to be exact) in the past 3 days from the same number. I answered the one of them, and it had the same 1minute 10s message saying to call the number back regarding a computer threat they found on my computer (the voicemails are all 1min 10s). These calls woke my kids and I up every..damn..day. The calls kept coming on my work and personal line. Without dialing back the number, I'll never know how this crap even started.

I feel bad for others out there who may actually fall for these kind of tactics

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I prefer not to hang up right away. Instead, I try to waste a bit of their time. For automated calls, I just put down the phone and wait a while to hang up.

But for people? I try other means of time wasting, so they can't call someone else to scam them.

Last time they called, I told them that it was good that they called, because my computer had detected a virus on their computer and that I wanted them to download an install malware.exe to remove it.

Next time they claim to call from Microsoft, I think I'll tell them I'm glad they've called, because I really need to speak to Bill Gates. Or if he's not available, Steve Ballmer.

I guess Bill might not answer his own phone any more, but I have to admit that I wonder what Bill does if he gets a call from them?

Maybe next time I should say that I'm Bill Gates and they're all fired?

At least this is more amusing than simply hanging up in disgust. And it helps slow down the rate at which they scam new people, even more so the more people who do this.

I had a lot of fun with someone from "Microsoft IT Support" just before Christmas : )

Tried to do a reverse phish and connect to their TeamViewer[0] but I didn't have time.

At least for an hour I bothered them by being the most clueless user I could get myself to be, "mistyping" urls so I ended up on tech websites instead. I also made notes to add to my previous guesswork on how they manage to fool users.

[0]: Yep, that or another seemingly legitimate remote access tool is what they use around here. Why TeamViewer cannot stop them I have no idea, these kinds of connections (India(?) to rural Western Europe) should stick out like a sore thumb in the data sets IK would guess?

>these kinds of connections (India(?) to rural Western Europe) should stick out like a sore thumb in the data sets IK would guess?

I'd guess the opposite: there are enough legitimate outsourcing firms in India that traffic from fraudsters blends in pretty nicely.

But none of those legitimate ones try to connect to me (IT tech, TeamViewer should know), my brothers and in-laws across the country etc etc all in the same day.

Off the top of my head typical TeamViewer usage should be more like some new, some recurring I think.

Put the phone on speakerphone with the volume down, don't listen to them at all and just get on with what you were doing, make some occasional noises to keep them interested. They normally get fed up after about 5-10 mins though.

If you do decide to call back, make sure you check the number online first. There are some phone scams that involve getting people to call back pay-to-talk (I don't know what the proper term is) numbers.

You're probably thinking of Premium-rate telephone numbers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premium-rate_telephone_number

It would be nice - not a solution, but an improvement nevertheless - if there was something like a "firewall" for phones, that allowed you to block calls based on the caller.

I have never been harassed like that, but I have often wished for a feature like that.

There are?

Go into your router settings through which you use your landline (or the settings in the phone app on your phone), it should look like this http://www.digiversum.de/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Rufsperr... and then add the number you want to block.

Thanks for the hint! I'll look into that!

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