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Saturday, October 15, 2011

Scam bait

The Gorse Fox was mistaken for scam bait. A phone call came through and an Indian gentleman tried to convince the Gorse Fox that he worked for Microsoft’s technical team. To prove his credentials he quoted the license number of the PC and said they were receiving an inordinate number of error messages from that machine.

GF’s antenna started to detect a rodent.

He then carefully instructed GF how to view the various events that the PC was recording and declared what a calamitous state it was in. The Gorse Fox played along. This was elaborate!

As long as he was suggesting the execution of benign commands, GF continued to ramp up his phone bill. Then came the denouement. He requested that the Gorse Fox access the internal technical support system at Microsoft. (err, if it is the Internal support system, why would GF be able to access it?).

The address of the system was given as a web address with AMMYY as part of the URL (GF won’t enter the whole thing to prevent anyone accidentally clicking on it). Why would an internal Microsoft web site not have some symbolic acronym for Microsoft somewhere in the URL?

Gorse Fox thanked the gentleman for his attention and told him that he would not be accessing the aforementioned address. It is, after all, a well known tool for taking over access to the PC and giving access to the hard drive.

The Gorse Fox is getting old, but he’s not senile yet!

2 comments:

The Gray Monk said...

You were probably one of the very few who would spot this for what it is. I doubt the average PC user, lacking your inside knowledge, would realise what was being run on them!

Don't know if you have heard this, but the Bavarian Government is in deep trouble - they authorised the Landespolizei to order a special spy program to use in a fight against criminals - only it turns out that the software allows them to do far, far more than was intended - among other things it can hide in Skype and similar programs, and use your camera, the microphones and your internet connection to see what you're doing and who you are contacting.

With the STASI of the old GDR still fresh in peoples minds you may imagine the uproar!

Gigibird said...

The same outfit keeps ringing me sometimes up to 4 times per day....I was told my computer was so full of viruses it could crash and any minute.
No matter what I say the calls keep coming.