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Comment by gloverkcn | Hacker News Reader

20 min is pretty good. I will usually get called while away from my computer. I try to see how long I can go from memory of windows (been using Mac for 8 years). Once they pass me to their manager I know they've caught on I'm fucking with them. The second guy is clearly more technical/experienced and starts trying to determine as fast as possible if I'm legit. My "computer" will slow down at that point, then, I ask stuff like "can you guys fix this as well?"

I love it when the person yells at me for wasting their time.

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I'm on mac too with a win7 vm, I hit upon the idea of tagging them along as far as I could when they asked me to press the windows key and I'm looking at a mac keyboard.

The different shops that have called me all follow a similar set of attacks

1) windows key 2) run command to msconfig 3) browser to download payload.

I had a 'supervisor' on the line once and when they asked me to connect to the internet I'm pretty sure I heard them curse at me with incredulity as I played the 56K dialup sound.

I once got them down a conversation cul-de-sac when I asked them which they preferred - Minesweeper or Solitaire.

I usually tell them its a hyper key...

>> I'm pretty sure I heard them curse at me with incredulity as I played the 56K dialup sound.

That is some comedy GOLD right there.

Oh do you have that recording. Awesome

I lost them cursing at me and I don't have the Solitaire v. Minesweeper discussion recorded but here's something similar at 11 minutes https://soundcloud.com/radiorental1/dell-support

Hah, this was great, listened to the whole thing. You had some nice tricks up your sleeve, laughed out loud a couple of times. Thanks! Love the response you got at the end...

Awesome!

Yeah they always use the prompt to get to the admin panel with the list of errors and logs to prove there's an issue. I always act nervous. "There's a lot, Is it that bad?", and they respond with "don't worry sir, we're going to get it fixed for you".

I've only played along once, when the guy called while I was cooking lunch, but yes, after 15 minutes or so the "manager" came on and cursed me out very vehemently. I told him he should be ashamed for scamming people.

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