Windows Event Viewer phishing scam remains active

i received a ph call from the phillipines this week informing me it was microsoft they hd me 4 5mins till they asked 4 my visa number i hung up they phoned bk 3x i got very abusive and hv not herd from them since,clint nz

i too had this phone call and had a bit of sense not to trust the guy. i asked for some sort of verification and he was willing to give me a number which i could ring him back on but after looking up the commands he was telling me i was having none of it. i asked him to remove my number from the system and hung up on him!

The same phishy call from overseas (on behalf of Microsoft!), he gave me "toll free" number (02)80062085 to call them back to fix my "infected Windows PC".

Hi folks, they just phoned me claiming to be Microsoft, calling from Oxford, and that they had diagnosed that my 'puter had a problem . . ..
I pretended to fiddle about as the guy suggested and told him "eventvwr" wouldn't work. I suppose I was literally laughing out loud as I asked for his phone number and address. He got his "senior technician" who wouldn't play and eventually became abusive, getting worse as I teased him about being a very poor phisherman. Even his "abuse" was pretty poor.
The phone number didn't exist and the address was an estate agents in Oxford.
B

I just got a call from what sounded like an Indian lady - delay before call was connected.I am in Australia. She said she was from "Windows" wanted me to type "eventvwr" into the run box. I was suspicious by then and asked her to send me an identifying e-mail for her company which she said was called "Support for PCs". She said she would within ten minutes, but no e-mail. I can't tell from the comments above what she was up to. What is the scam?

Same thing happened to me today.

I asked him to call back in an hour while I researched on the net. This is the only Australian site I've found that talks about this particular scam.

Can't wait to see if they call back now.

I received a call on Saturday 28/8/10 from an Indian sounding woman who said that they (PC Doctors in Melbourne) were working for Windows and a malware bug in my system would affect my hard drive and my computer would become useless.

She asked me to access event viewer from My computer and confirmed that the error and warning messages were in fact the "bug" she was talking about.

She put me through to a technician who asked me to log in to logmein123. As soon as the tech asked me to do this I became even more suspicious. I told them that I would not allow them access to my whole computer when I don't know who they are and have no proof of who they are.

They gave me a phone number (03) 8807-0958 and a name (Steven Lee employee id 456132). I told them I would call them back on this number.

I called the number to verify and the same Indian voice was on the message and I did not ask for Steven as it is all too fishy.

I then googled windows scams and this sit came up.

Thank goodness for this. Please widely advertise this scam as many people would freak (like I nearly did) and do what they are asked to do.

I just recieved this call at 3pm this afternoon, I was very wary about what the wanted from me. The callers were from India. At first I wasnt interested at all but I was assured that they were from Windows and had been informed that I had several errors and my computer would crash any time within the next 24 hours....After running the scans, I was transferred to the supervisor as my problem was extreme. They went on to explain that I would be able to purchase livetime suport for around $500 or for 5 years for around $400. I told them i dont have any money, they pertended to put me on hold and see if a deal could be made. I explined that i dont have any money to pay for this so i would be getting it. They couldnt get off the phone fast enough... I found out that what they are trying to sell is free on microsft web site, however as my computer is new it isnt preloaded onto my computer, but free to install from http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=890830

Be carefull out there!!!

We have received 3 calls from a company saying they are calling from Microsoft, they refused to give a phone number and gave the website of: clickforsupports.com...they were trying to get us to type "eventvwr" which we refused to each time, what does this command do??

First to alleviate all the worry that everyone had before typing eventvwr is not a problem it will not hurt anything at all actually. What they are doing is setting you up by sending you to a area that always displays error messages to fool you into believing that this is why they are calling. then they will either try and sell you something via credit card, send you to a website to download something, or ask to setup remote session with you so they can fix the "problem". The main purpose of this scam it get bank a credit card info.

Now i will agree that Virus software ins important allot of the apps these groups are using may not be released in the wild since they are using controlled distribution and Virus software may not pick them up. Privacy is your right but it is your job to protect it.

got that call today from a person with indian accent,telling me he was from "windows" and that my computer was attacked by a virus during a download.........i just said,stop right there,how do u know my name(he asked for me by my last name)how did u get this number and most of all how would u know that i use windows???he replied don't u have a computer?isaid yes id o,but my operating system is linux,again my name and number,how did you get it??next thing i heard was the crackling of him hanging up.

Report em. Do Not Call Register can trace the calls. Maybe they can be prosecuted. I tricked one into giving me the company name etc. They were calling from Adelaide and were routing the calls through an overseas number.

Had a call from a guy who said he was from Windows yesterday advising they had been receiving errors from my computer and wanted to help fix the problem. Got me to type "eventvwr" into the run box and click on Window Log -> Applications and requested a scoll through and count how many Errors and Warning. I kept asking how did he get my details and why am I doing this. Ended up hanging up. Thanks Chris for confirming typing eventvwr is not a problem it will not hurt anything.

We live in country Australia and have been having calls from these goons for quite some time now. They have always sounded suspect to me, so we have always just told em to get lost and get an honest job. However, today I was in front of the computer when they called and had the time so I played along until I got something I could google - www.winpctech.net, and found this site as I was speaking to him on the phone. I read one of the posts out to him to which he had no reply. I then proceeded to tell him that it is just a log file they had me look at and was not a reflection of the current state of my PC. After that I proceeded to lecture him about honesty and the damage he was doing to his country's image. I had so much more to tell him but he hung up! How rude! ;)

I think it is in the interests of everyone to put their number on the 'Do not call register'. We are on it so the only calls we get are either from registered charities or are dodgy - its very easy to tell the difference under those circumstances. Also, unsolicited (but legitimate) tele-marketing is rude and invasive, if it weren't financially viable they wouldn't do it - so don't feed it!

I live in Sydney and I just got this exact call and wanted to see who else has had the pleasure.

A young male (obviously) Indian voice advised me that my windows XP/Vista/Win 7, he wasn't quite sure which one I had, had been found to be downloading a virus and that he had all the answers to my problems.

There is only one problem with his information, I don't own a windows computer so when I advised him my house is running a Mac Server and has two MacBook Pros and and old G4. His story changed to now include Mac OSX. Funny that, I was under the impression Mac don't have Virus'.

I have had many calls like this over the last few months but never looked into it and I certainly never believed anything they said.
I am more interested in how to stop them, I have signed up for the Do-Not-Call list and that stopped alot of the hassling calls but every time I try to get a company name or some info out of them to report, they just hang up on me.

I live in Picola (VIC) and got one of these calls about 15 minutes ago.

It was an Indian woman claiming to represent Microsoft Support so I was was very suspicious from the start due to the foreign accent and dodgy connenction.

Decided to play along and, heck, almost believed her with the 'eventvwr' trick!

However once she told me to go onto the remote access 'LogMeIn123.com' site I almost laughed out loud. In the end I told her that she had got it wrong and I used a Mac, and hung up.

It is a bit scary though, this could be very convincing to more trusting or less 'tech savy' people people than myself...

I'm in Endland, i had a call saying my windows pc had a problem, i told them it sounded like a scam and that they wouldn't get anything from me and hung up on them. They then had the cheek to phone back saying they were from 'the international routing company' for Microsoft that my computer was infected- blah blah- and that it would "one fine day" crash unexpectedly. So i typed "eventvwr" looked at the errors and warnings. During the call i said several times that it sounded like a scam but they persisted and i played along. He asked me to look at an error - i did and the message was just something about a not enough memory for an application. He told me that 'clusters' would form in my computer and ruin it. I replied 'So what?' He hung up on me.

Always be suspicious of callers like this. They phone up, tell you that you have a problem AND GUESS WHAT?? THEY ARE OFFERING YOU A SOLUTION!!! It too good to be true.

Googled it straight after and found this thread. I'm glad to know that typing eventvwr does no harm in itself.

Well I'm just stunned that the first comment has been left posted when it's obviously an ADD. Shame shame moderator.
I kept the scammer on for at least 15 minutes and allowed him to take me through some of the process. My lack of "Red Erros" confused him no end - peraps cos I'd only just fresh installed the day before. Anyway, he hung up when I kept asking him "but who was it that gave you this information ?"

I'm going to try to keep him for an hour next time. Then tell him I'm using Linux

Sadly me too!
I fell for thier pitch..unbelievably so, should have known better!!
Later having a think about the process they had taken me through, I checked out winpctech on the internet and found this and so many other compalints..why are they allowed to keep in business?..any one have any idease who i need to report them to..?
I am now totally focused on yring to get my cash back!!

Melbourne !
My mum received a call from a lady in the name of ROSE claiming firstly on Saturday that she is calling from Microsoft and that their computers have received errors from our computer and that is was about to crash , my mum asked if it was our computer or laptop and ROSE said the laptop, my mother went as far as typing in inf windows ,and eventwvr and all that and then rose transfered the call to another so called (rep ) to fix it , they asked for 75$ to get a technician to fix it by giving the credit card number , and mum got suspicous and told them to call back when i was home ( son) , i knew it was a scam right away , so i called telstra ( phone provider ) and told them to put a trace on our phone calls, they called again just before and the same indian girl ( ROSE) now claimed that she was from a windows pc center and that i should follow what she says and that our computer would crash if i didnt , i pretended to do so and claimed that my computer was actually running slow and i couldnt do what she said because i had work on their that i needed to save and didnt literally want my computer crash like she said.( LOL computer is actually very fast) therefore i asked her to call me back tomorrow night , looking forward to hearing from here because that way we can trace her number better and make sure less gullable people loose there money to these low lives.

Another website about this scam is:
http://www.theogray.com/blog/2010/07/international-routing-system

Dont give these dodgy b*stards anything!!!!!

Just got one of these calls, my grandfather had one a few weeks ago, both of us knew it was a scam pretty much straight away.

The guy (most likely Indian) said he was from "IT Support, Windows Operating System"

I followed along for a while, and told him our phone sometimes disconnects, so I would need his number ( (02 )80061238) to call him back if something went wrong.

I was going to follow right through to see where it led, but I got bored and he was hard to understand.

I accused the guy of trying to scam me, which of course he denied, though I expected a hang-up.

Where can we report this?

Just got the call (2nd time, first time my wife answered and told then to call back when I was around). I work in IT so I followed along to see what the scam was. As others have noted, they get you to open event viewer to see normal errors (that are not that critical) to scare you into doing something unwise. In my case they told me to go to a website (www.24x7pchelp.com) and buy a support product. They are quite brazen. They list 4 products on the website and tell you to buy the most expensive. When I said I wanted to buy the cheaper product they said it was actually more expensive.
Don't know if there is much an Australian regulator can do, I will try to complain to the secure credit card collection site they were spoofing (http://www.esellerate.net/)

You can report them to ScamWatch if you want, on the ACCC's web site. It's at http://www.scamwatch.gov.au/ . (ACCC = Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, a government department). You can also view other scams there and get pointers on how to avoid them. Cheers,

Just had this call and became suspicious when a small one off fee was required to fix the problem. Told the superviser, Alexander, I would speak with me computer man first before making any payments. The claim was that the computer would be running very slow with all the virouses and malware on the computer. The ride I was on took me to eventvwr, prefetch spyware, inf malware and finally www.logmein123.com where the fee became neccessary. I requested his contact number which was 0880007868 (Sydney) Thanks to all the above posts I have been spared this scam!

oh and not to mention that I got him to confirm that the modem was a sunbeam and our internet provider is ICUP!!! got to love messing with these idiots.

I got a call from secureallpc.com yesterday afternoon. They told me to go to there website and that they were Microsoft accredited. They were quite convincing but i suspect just trying to sell their brand of antivirus product.

I will post a link to this page on my blog.
Thanks!

got a call from some indian dude, claiming to be from microsoft tech support. I immediately knew this was a stupid scam, so I played along. The guy was trying to get me to type eventvwr by going 'e for echo, v for victor, e for echo, n for novermber and so on'. This was hilarious as I acted to be a computer illiterate and asked him to repeat like 15 times till the guy got fedup, I was like 'what ? do I type in victor ? it didn't work!'. Thx to these guys I had a fun 15 mins call before he gave up and hung up on me.

This happened to my husband yesterday 21/12/2010 at about 12.30pm. Unfortunately he believed them and gave them our NZ Visa details. At 3.15am this morning 22/12 he suddenly realised what he had done and has rung and put a hold on our visa account. The firm was SECUREALLPC. He is normally very careful about what he does but got sucked in as we have actually been having problems. Will be very careful from now on.

If you PC guys keep telling them you have a Mac they will start to develop a scam for Mac users too, so please don't

(Macs are safe from viruses, but Mac users could still be tricked into installing a piece of malware through allowing external access by an untrusted party)

I have received several of these calls lately, the most recent asked me straight out "Are you running Windows"?

I actually played along on an earlier call (pretended to be dumb) and managed to record the call
They tried immediately to get me to do something with the windows key and when eventually they realised that I wasn't running windows they hung up

It's scary because a lot of people are going to get caught out and end up either giving over financial details or worse (ie giving permanent access to the scammers for the purpose of keylogging and identity theft as well as possible terrorist acts through adding your PC to a botnet)
If they are only scamming you for a few hundred $$$ you should probably count yourself lucky

Same sort of stuff. An Indian named Shane with ID number called me. Same as above but company name was "Techoptimizer". As he spoke I browsed to this webpage. I told him that I found out it was a scam. He told not to worry about that and close the webpage. Ha. Yeah right!
His phone number was 02 8005 8034.

I'm glad it was useful to me. Thanks for your work. Ill be in touch

I got a call from an indian guy that said he was from microsoft and he asked did I have windows if so, he would check to see if my PC was working properly, he wanted me to do what he said and he could speed up the PC. I was warned once before to be careful as they tell you what to do and can scan your information via the phone. I don't really know if they can do this but I wasn't about to find out, so I politely told him to piss off. Now when we get calls from Indians we say hang on I will get the boss and hand the phone to our 4 year old to talk to. Now thats funny.

I have a question. I have had a number of thes calls over the past few months and did my research on this scam so I knew how to deal with them the first 8 times.
Over the past three days, I have had another 3 calls along the same lines. The first one I played along for a while then told them I run an iMac, the second time I just hung up and the third time I becamse quite abusive towards the geezer and got stuck into him for being a criminal and to p*ss off etc etc etc.

Surprisingly enough however, I was then infected by a w32Blaster virus which shut down my computer and did not allow me to open anything, not even to do a run in DOS.

Could these pricks have somehow infected me with this insidious virus????

I cant imagine they could as they wouldn't know anything about my computer would they, or how would they find my IP address?

Just a warning to all... don't become abusive to these cretins if you think they may infect you.. just hang up (over and over and over again)

Seriously, if anyone can let me know whether my virus would be possibly planted by these dickheads, can you let me know.

cheers

I had a similar call from someone claiming to be from microsoft.
I just told the guy I was opening a brothel and wanted his mum and sister to come work for me. He actually hung up on me!

Thank goodness ComputerWorld have given this issue some space and kept this article up judging by the comments it is turning up in search engines and people are becoming more aware. Be careful don’t take these people for granted they are very, very clever and very persistent one would presume it is out of desperation to make a living if you can understand this you will understand their motivation and that they are unlikely to stop unless systems are more effectively designed. Some of the less sophisticated are simply trying to solicit payments and are obvious but the more sophisticated attackers are trying to trick you into enabling your remote desktop or trick you into downloading malware from an infected website so they can access your computer and then gain access to your assets eg bank account, broad band, email and personal details for identity theft etc. There are some simple ways to protect against this. Ask your network owners if they can provide you with Armorlog Authentication this will prevent you from being tricked into revealing your network access details and if they do get access to your computer they will not get access to your network account if it is running the Armorlog Authentication. Always run antivirus and antimalware detection software. This will not always provide protection against the most up to date malware but it certainly significantly reduces your chances of falling victim. Buy your antivirus software from a local retail store to improve your chances of getting legitimate software there are an enormous number of scams on the internet selling fake antivirus software that is actually malware to give criminals access to your computer. The software I particularly like is from McAfee it provides a full suite of protection including monitoring of search engine links which is now the most common way peoples computers are being infected with Malware. Oh and if you have been duped don’t feel stupid these people are very sophisticated and they rely on your feeling foolish. Talk with people and let other people know what has happened by all means report it to the police and communications authorities and your internet service provider. The only dumb question is the one that didn’t get asked. Just one more thing if you have a silent number this is not going to protect you from the autodialing systems they use which can generate numbers randomly to dial. One way to fool them is to change the time it takes for your phone to ring they will drop out and move on to the next number, obviously another is to simply screen calls with an answering machine. There is no cost to them as they are generally using somebody’s hijacked VOIP dialling service just try to not let it be yours.

HOW do you people fall for it?!?! seriously!

i was called by one of these people and was convinced for a while....i went to the site they said to go to and downloaded some supportme program they then asked for details and i hung up and deleted the program...question is, was downloading the program enough to give away any details?????? please someone answer

I too was called by these people. The Indian lady claimed to be in Melbourne but I could tell from the phone line that wasn't the case. Because I had been experiencing problems with my computer I thought it may have been legitimate. She gave me a phone number 1300 784 895 which I called from my mobile while I was talking to her; someone did answer so I proceeded, BIG MISTAKE! I went ahead and purchased a $161 package which was supposed to get rid of the bugs and speed up my computer. THANK GOODNESS I noticed there was an option to pay with PayPal instead of a credit card. The following morning after checking this site about what a scam it was, I contacted PayPal, lodged a dispute, within 24 hours the money had been refunded. THANK YOU PAYPAL, and THANK YOU for this site.

I received a call today and being totally computer illiterate and gullible by nature let them con me up to the bank details which I refused to give them. I did however tell them my computer id number which I realise now was a mistake.I hestitated with the first conman and said I didn't think I should be giving him my id number so he put me through to his supervisor who reassured me that it was ok. After speaking to this 'nice' man I agreed to tell him the number. I don't have personal details on my computer such as banking etc. but am now wondering after reading some posts, can they steal my identity? Would they be reading what I am writing now? Told you I am computer illiterate. For those who understand the workings of computers please don't bag us who don't. I feel foolish and let down.

I live in Coffs Harbour and received a call tonight - just glad my teenager doesnt have a credit card - was a good chance to open up conversation with her regarding scammers - which is sadly, the world we live in.

Same thing happened here.
We woke up pretty quickly and put an end to it by hanging up.
Why cant this thing be made public on the news media.
How many people have actually been caught unawares and have fallen for this very illegal trap?

"29 andrew
Thu 28/10/2010 - 15:18
I live in Melbourne, and have had about six of these calls.
Although I do own 2 separate PCs (one xp, one 7), every time they call I just tell them I own a Mac... they don't know what to say and usually hang up"

Great advice, I'll do that next time.

You need to cut those people some slack, they are just trying to help us with our computers and earn an honest dollar.

this scam is still active as i just got off the phone to an indian man called jack dawson... unfortunately they sound so legit i let them us a remote desktop link but stopped when they took me to their website to pay for their services.. i jst said no and that i will have to speak to my partner.. how can i tell if they still have access to my computer??
is there anyway to see if they are still accessing my computer and seeing my bank acc details etc?
i feel so stupid

I live in Australia I have just had a call from an Indian lady who said I was having trouble with windows and that my computer was running slowly. She not only knew my name but also my address which is a worry, as I wonder how she found that out. I realized straight away that it was a scam as my computer has been fine and it is running quite quickly. I also knew that Windows never phone anyone, if you have trouble you get in touch with them! . I told her that my computer was running quickly and she hung up immediately. My husband is more worried about her knowing details about me as people do take one's identification. I am so pleased to have found this website and to find that others have had the same problem

I am on the NO CALL REGISTER yet I have had several DOZEN phone call from these people, for a while they were from "technical support" and I just kept hanging up or leaving my phone off the hook. Now they are from "pc 24x7 support" in california - and they want to remove "junk and malicious virus's" from my computer by connecting remotely and it will only cost me $179... i kept them talking for almost an hour last night before they caught on that i was playing with them and they got angry and hung up on me. But they even wanted to know things like why I didn't own a brand new computer and how much I bought my "second hand" one for - I asked what bearing that would have on the situation - and he had no response... AND whilst playing i told them that what they had asked me to type in had sent my computer into a frenzied spaz attack but he could not explain that - which i questioned as he was technically from technical support -he was no good at providing technical assistance, nor was he any good at getting any money out of me - do these phone calls cost me any money and can they get into my computer by me having the line open for so long????
also she gave me last night a massive long code that she reckons was my computers ID and that if I typed that into a particular website it would show me how she knew about the bugs in my computer... luckily i didn't cos i have since found out this website enables remote access - and god knows what they would have done if they got in!!!

Scam still going on. Phone call Saturday 3pm. During the few second delay to an Indian woman's voice I could hear kids in the background. Although identifying my surname correctly the title was wrong so this made me suspicious.

Had the same spiel and when asked to start up my computer I said I was busy and asked for her phone number so I could get a technician friend to call her back and fix my computer.

She told me it would cost me $200 - $300 for a technician and she could save me that money. My reply was he owed me a favour and it would cost nothing so please give me her number to call back. She hung up.

Thought I would google "Windows OS scam" and found this site.

Vic
Newcastle Australia

Just received a call with the eventvwr and www.logmein123.com requests. I hadn't heard of the scam but knew enough to turn off my internet connection and hang up on the guy--wish I'd known so I could use up his phone time!

Like everyone else I to had a call from these Indian accented persons I twigged they where scammers. I said I could not understand what she was talking about she put me on to another person who was the tech expert and he got irate when I acted dumb. Pretended that I could not understand the accent, he then wanted to pass me on to another person. I then hung up.

Give them the number to crime stoppers and tell them to speak to your boss as he owns the computer

For any scams provide the information to

www.scamwatch.gov.au

or you can contact them on 1300 795 995

s

I just had one of these calls a few minutes ago.
I was greeted by an Indian guy named "Chris Harris" (yeah right!)

He said he was from "Secure All PC's" and when I accused him of being part of a scam, he said their address is 217 Miller Road, North Sydney 2060 and he game me a number to call him back on 0257188083

I called back out of curiosity and was greeted by an automated message coming from an Indian Lady's voice of the same company. I was then transferred to one of their representatives. When they answered, they didn't say anything and either did I. I was waiting to see if it was "Chris" but I hung up after about 15 seconds.

Honestly I can't believe people are getting caught by such an obvious con

+1. Sounded sus from word go, Indian guy saying 'mate' in every sentece.. 'how are you mate?" etc. He said he was from Microsoft Tech dep't, the usual, then asked "what version of Windows are you running?". I told him if he was from Microsoft he should be able to tell me, he responded with "there are many versions of Windows etc...." I played along anyway, while he was trying to spell out "eventvwr" with whatever words he could find, I googled "eventvwr scam" and found out for certain it was dodgy. I told him that I'd googled it and found out it was a scam and he tried to hold on to the call but I hung up. He tried calling back but I hung up on him again. He was calling from phone number 0280910006. I wish I had played on a little longer, it was amusing while it lasted but is very unfortunate that those not as computer savvy and very concerned about viruses/trojans can fall for this. Agree with Margo's post, can't believe this hasn't been publicised and there should be a better facility for reporting scams such as this.

I have just had a very interesting conversation with a very nice and informative gentleman who told me that his name was Justin, I managed to get him to tell me that he was from Wales, in his very strong Indian accent, he proceeded to talk me through running event viewer on my pc, I did this while preparing dinner and doing the washing up. It took some time because I was keen to try to talk welsh to him, It is after all St Davids day, I misunderstood the letters he tried to tell me and told him that I couldn't open eventv'u'r, eventually , when I decided that my welsh was not good enough and that we should try in English I told him, as I marinated the chicken breasts, that it was working.... you probably all know what follows, but I managed to string this out by insisting upon counting all of the errors and warnings! 'Oh Dear Me!, Oh Gosh, How frightening! I was exclaim, 'please help me! I didnt realise that my computer was in such a bad way, are people stealing my information? am I being attacked?'... chicken in the fridge, now to prepare the salad...upon being asked to return to the, as he referred to it, 'little run box' and go to www.pccure.net, I was losing patience and dinner was all prepared and I need to do some scale practise...and can hardly do that with Mr Justin from Microsoft in wales on the phone, I told Mr Justin, that as I have a temporary problem with my broadband service that he will need to call back in a day or two, but that I 'really do appreciate his help'... I managed to string him out for a good 40 minutes, I intend to video/record, somehow, his return call. Of course I will make him go through the whole rigmarole yet again, knowing that while he is dealing with me, he cant be calling other people who, god forbid, may actually believe a word Mr Justin from Microsoft tells them.... so what shall I be preparing for dinner when he calls back? I am thinking, roast with full trimmings! ;) Dont let these tossers in! waste their time if you can afford to and NEVER allow them access to your PC!

I had the same call today from someone named Carl. He told me the same crap about infected files on my lap top. Immediately I became suspicious because I know my computer is not infected, I have AVG, Malewarebytes pro and CCleaner. I asked him how he got my number and he said from some worldwide router info thing. I kept questioning this man and he hung up. I contacted my ISP (optus) and they said it sounds like a scam, and gave me the scamwatch.gov.au site. I instead rang the ACCC who immediately told me its a scam to allow third partys to access your computer. Now I see I just had a missed call from the same number again (the number is 001197600), God I hope they call back.

I recieved this call tonight. I knew instantly it was dodgy. I posted a comment on Facebook to alert family & friends. I rang my mum straight away as she is older & not overly computer literate so thought she may have fallen for it. She was smart, she said her number is on the do not call register & not to call her again. I was on the phone only a couple of minutes & am not sure if it was a coincedence but shortly after getting off phone.....no accessing computer for their requests.....I got a Trojan. My anti-virus picked it straight up. My sister in law came to see if she could use my computer as my mother in law was in process of going through the whole process with them on the phone. I went to mother in laws. She hung up when they asked for credit card or bank details, they had already got her to install remote access. Thankfully she hadn't deleted this off her computer as they were ringing her back the next day for alternate payment options. Before removing all traces I could find of them in her computer I took every detail I could find. Am now reporting this to SCAMwatch. Hopefully this will get them caught & stop others from getting conned. I also conducted a thorough search of her computer & found 4 more items that didn't appear to be there for Ammyy.com also deleted these. As I said I've taken plenty of details off their remote access & will forward it on. I have anti-viruses now scanning all computers connected to both of our modems.

Had the same phone call today, this must be my 5th at least. previously the Indian woman has hung up on me when I have informed her that I dont use windows. Today i played along until i got the eventvwr. I then told her that the call was been recorded and that the Fraud Police would like a word with her. She hung up pretty smart!!

Received my first call this morning. I'm near Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Hard to understand due to the accent at first. I was not phased about the 'big PC problem' they presented as I work in the industry. I have multiple computers in our home all running fine and well protected. I asked pointed questions like exactly why they were calling and got very vague answers, and they did not give me specifics or provide external web references. Claimed they were not out to sell me a product. They just wanted me to enter the "eventvwr" command. I was then transferred to another person with better language skills. More probing questions from me and discovered they had all my address information correct down to the postal code. They gave me the Techoptimizer company name. I had had enough, gave them an ear-full about telephone solicitation and the Canadian do-not-call list (like that would make a difference), and then hung up.

The non-technical users out there are the targets. Please do not give these people any information.

Just got a call with delay and an asian man from "Windows" advising me that I had malicious software and he would help me remove it.
I asked him to ring me back on a different number, which he did, but when I checked 1471 his number had been withheld.

He did ring on my mobile number and asked me to type eventvwr.............. at which point I challenged him about the authenticity of his call. He offered to continue gave me his address to contact as 404 4th Floor Alberni House Regent Street. After thanking him for his advice and not proceding he eventually agreed to ring off.

just got a call from these people as well but funny thing is they have tried to call about 20 times before she acctually decided to talk to us ,knew it was dodgy decided to give her the run around and told her i was on to her and said better luck next time, she said thanks LOL scum..

it would appear this is happening in all parts of the world

PLEASE PLEASE wherever you are report these calls to the relevant telecom regulators

LETS GET THEM STOPPED

AND HOPEFULLY LOCK UP SCUM LIKE THIS

I'm in Australia and I got a phone call last week from them and then today as well. At first the lady said she was from Microsoft and then I asked her again and then she said "Online Repair World" either way this is a know scam, do not ever go to the web site they ask you to go to - they will install a key stroke logger on your machine. Say good bye to your credit card details then.

The Australian government must ensure that its citizens are protected from scammers like carensolutions.com. They cannot play their dirty tricks in their home country, that is, India for fear of legal steps. Paypal should be controlled to withdraw support from these scammers.

Carensolutions is one such scam company which takes advantage of gullible people to sell useless contracts in league with Paypal posing as miceosoft authorised service centre for remote computer support...

This JUST happened to me. Well, they tried, but I told the caller to ingest excrement.

I AM on the Do Not Call Registry, though.

I have now had 5 or more phone calls from these people with an Indian accent stating that Ihave multipul viruses. They Prompted me to press the windows flag and "r" button and then put in eventvwr which of course I didn't I typed in into google and it cam up with event phishing scam. When he asked me what had come up on the computer and I read out it was and event phishing scam he quickly hung up on me. I now hope I don't get them calling me again.. as I will play along keep them talking rack up there phone bill and then tell them that I know about there scam then hang up on them...

Just had the "lady" on the phone for about 20 mins claiming she firstly was from Microsoft then back tracking to "Online Repair World" calling on MS's behalf.

I had a bad feeling right away and went along trying to get some verification from her; my name, address, serial # of laptop etc.
She wouldn't do anything other than assure me that i had a massive virus problem and my computer could crash at any moment (qeue sinister music!)

By this time I had looked up her company, saw it was a scam and started having real fun with her. She just kept asking if I "wanted to save my computer or not?" and if I "didn't trust her to trust my computer". Rude b!#(%!

When I finally told her I had run Norton 360 to check for viruses, found none, then googled her company and found it was a scam she called me a liar.

I suggested that this was not good customer relations and told her to get some further training in that area before suggesting she persue a career at McDonalds!

She hung up.

Perhaps she doesn't get god old Aussie Sarcasm!

Thank you; come again.

I seem to be getting these calls every second day. I am now having a little fun with them. With the last one I used my best indian accent. Every time he used my name I would answer with "hello good morning" This went on for about 10 minutes. He started getting louder and louder.d When I was sure I had his undivided attention I did the old blow the whistle in the phone trick. Stangely he hung up. Hope the ear has recovered Ravi.

Received the same phone call at 4:34 on May 6/11 in Winnipeg, Manitoba. First a female, who then passed me to a male who apparently had better negotiating tactics. Hmmm... memories of a timeshare experience. Caller id was unavailable and like other posters, stated they were calling to let me know that my computer had viruses. Their company was called quickresolve. After actually typing in the "eventvwr" as requested, I hesitated and googled it and found it was a scam. Then I told them it was a scam and hung up. They had said they were calling all Microsoft users but wanted to know what operating system I had. That was the first clue that this seemed fishy.

It is actually Telstra giving our sacred personal details away without regard for our safety. We installed a **brand new line** a few months ago. ***NO ONE*** has been given this number since installation... the ONLY CALLS I RECEIVE on fortnightly basis are the "Microsoft" calls... how in this earth some Indian / Bangladeshi dude knows our surnames if NO ONE, not even family members have this number? and the calls started a few days after installation... I just got another one and in fact i had a bit of a chat to the idiot that called me!!... i wonder how many people get robbed of they hard earned money thanks to the irresponsible actions of third parties.
Elsita.

I have just had my 8th call in as many weeks, all start off saying similar things and all have an Indian type of accent.

This evening I spoke with a lady from Support For Your PC. I 'played' stupid saying I was very worried but I am not sure which of my 4 PC's is the infected one. She replied by saying all of them! She handed me to her Supervisor, Victor Smith (who had an Indian accent), he said that the infected PC is the oldest one, I asked can he confirm which one and when it was purchased as I needed help with knowing how I can tell which is the older one (I have a 6 year old PC (Windows XP), 2 x 3 year old PC's (Vista) and a 3 week old PC).

He rambled on to say how I needed to protect my PC and that I have to do this, I quizzed him about who says I have to do anything! He went on to say that they offer a service, so I asked him how much. The caller listed of a number of 'services' I could purchase protecting all 4 PC's for life - BARGAIN!

After a bit more 'playing' I then said how do I know that they are not scamming me, Victor kindly gave me his phone number (612 830 75229) and a website address: www.xcreation.co.in even his Payrol ID (XK0499/099). He then insisted that I pressed the Windows key and pressed the letter R to Run some checks. He asked me to key in eventvwr and click OK. I hesitated and said that I was still not sure who he was, he confidently told me that he gave me his details to confirm who he was, I said him giving me information does not confirm anything and that I needed time to check them out. He promptly told me that it was his lunch time (7:30pm Melbourne, Australia time) and hung up.

I then did a Google search on the commands he gave me and found this - my instincts were correct, it is a scam.

Keep safe!

Just got the same call from an Indian-voiced chap who worked in "Punchbowl" as part of the Windows Support program (or something). He asked me to open event viewer, showed me all the "terrible" red errors - "Oh My God, Sir, Oh My God, this is terrible!" As I got more and more suspicious, I asked him how the weather was in Punchbowl - he said it was wonderful (it was freezing in Sydney) and how he got to work. I asked how he got my details and he told me about "My Operating System provider" doing an error audit and that I was a privileged user or something. When I asked him what system I was running he said XP - I said no, he then said, "Oh, yes, it's Vista" - I said no, he eventually guessed 7, then told me my security warranty had expired as I had owned the computer more than a year - I said No, then he said from 6-12 months, I said No, he said more than 3 months - YES! When he said he was going to fix the problems remotely, I told him I was not going to open Remote Viewer - he hung up immediately without another word.
Is there any way the phone companies can trace the last number?

I wish someone was smart enough to use a digital recorder to phone freak these people so that we could have audio evidence to laugh at as a centrepiece of amusement. I haven't had the phone calls but being in the IT Industry I feel it is my duty to kill off these muppets.
The ironic thing is that the scammers still need to comply to market economics to sell a scam. Would you buy tech support for $1,000 or $75? That's where they could likely convince someone. Sorry to all who were scammed.

I received a similar call this week from an indian sounding woman. My daughter first answered the phone and I am no sure exactly what she was told, before she handed the phone over to me. She handed me the phone, saying, "She says we are downloading malicious malware and viruses on our windows pc, I told her we run all macs."
I am guessing this scammer thought we sounded naive enough, so she attempted to explain the situation to me. I just acted too clueless, asking her how would they get this information, how would they be seeing this if I am running only macs? She said she works with Microsoft Engineering and they know I am always downloading malicious malware. She mentioned something about us having to stop this! I guess she got frustrated when I couldn't understand why Microsoft Engineering would be involved with my computers, when I have only working macs. She hung up on me. I guess I was just too uncooperative? ; ) Or maybe she didn't know who "Mac" is? I didn't mention that I run Parallels.....
Call was received three days ago, in Indiana, USA

Tried to scam me today. I played along and kept typing eventvwr incorrectly. As I use a Mac I had to pretend to type. My favourite was asking him where the 'no space' key was as I couldnt find it. Kudos to the chap as he kept trying until I got bored and explained to him that he was wasting his time. If I had more time I would have kept him busy for hours.

I was called by a person claiming to be from Microsoft. They told me that I had malicious software on my computer and they would help me with it. I knew it was a scam right away as I use Linux and so I played along with the conversation. I asked him where he was calling from and he said Sydney. So I asked him what time it was in Sydney and he kept changing the topic and eventually said that he did not have a watch or a clock. He asked me to turn my computer on and run eventvwr. I played along without actually doing anything. After about 15-20 minutes he told me to stop wasting hist time and told me to f*** off. I asked him why he was swearing at me and he then hung up on me. I guess the scammers don't like to be beaten at their own game.

This scam still active in Sydney

You have to be the most gullible person in the world to be tricked by scams like this, Windows would never ever ever ever in a million years make phone calls to fix issues, its way too inefficient with the number of Windows users out there. They would use the means of Windows Update, online, and so would any other companies who have produced any software what so ever.

If anyone rings you about a program on your computer at any time you can write it off as a scam no matter what the program, period.

The scams people come up with these days are so poor, I'm surprised people educated enough to use a computer could ever fall for them...

Just received a phone call, same scenario, could hear in the background that it was a calling centre. I would love to know how they knew my last name, when it's private number. As soon as I hear a delay and foreign voice, my response is to terminate call.

Don't be fooled people!

I just had a call from an Indian guy who claimed to be from Microsoft. They told me my computer had been error reports to their servers and that they could fix it. I have more than one computer in the house (1 mac and 1 pc - although I didn't let him know it was just one pc). He then said that it didn't matter which computer it was if it shared the same internet connection.
He asked me to type in eventvwr into the run dialogue box at which point a googled it instead. I told him I didn't believe him and told him it was a scam and hung up. If anyone ever contacts you and asks you to do this - hang up.

I had a call today aswell, they asked me to open the eventvwr, so I looked up 'eventvwr', and the first search result was this page, found out it was a scam so I repetitly asked 'Sandra' if she was a 'sick cuz', just for fun.

I had a call today from an indian sounding guy...very hard to understand him, but he said he was from department of ??? (couldnt understand him for the life of me after 3 attempts!) he said something about microsoft, windows, viruses and my computer being corrupt and me being a windows customer...ummm i dont have windows....he hung up on me as soon as i told him that! lol
Idiot!

I find myself coming to your blog more and more often to the point where my visits are almost daily now!

I got scammed by www.24x7pchelp.com today, too. Sounded so legitimate. Said my Antivirus had expired and my trial Vista software had expired and my computer would crash in 5 hours. Showed me a list of about 300 error messages supposedly on my computer. I expressed surprise, but was taken in and fell for it and paid for $200 for a once-only software upgrade and $100 for Antivirus and gave them remote control access to my computer to work on it for 1 hr. My husband came home, got suspicious and we tried to call the Florida number - it didn't work. I interrupted the remote control work and removed permission. we called the 1-877 number at 24x7 and enumerated the lies they had told me. Turns out my Norton was still fine for 60 days and we had purchased the Vista CDs with the computer (no trail version). They said, "Sorry, you've already paid for it." I said "Forget it. I purchased based on lies, so this is fraud. You taped the conversation and MasterCard will listen to it if they investigate and I have proof the things you told me were a lie. Don't process that payment, or you'll be investigated for fraud." So far they haven't done anything, but I"m concerned what they will do with the credit card info I inputted on the 24x7 site. This is a scam, folks. Take their name and number and hang up and then do your research and see that you shouldn't call them back. They are very convincing that they are "legitimate Vista software providers" and and also play on the fear thay your computer is going to crash within hours.

I live in Melbourne, AUstralia.
I had a guy with an Indian accent call me from "windows" today. I laughed at him and told him 'don't you mean microsoft', he insisted windows, rather than microsoft, which I thought was interesting.
I played along because I was interested in seeing what he would ask for.
However, I was weary of him recording my voice, just in case he decided to use my voice and claim to be me. So i used an accent and asked him to keep repeating himself. I saw no harm in going to 'eventvwr' service, which he asked me to do.
Instead of going to eventvwr, at first, I googled eventvwr and I saw the Phishing scam.
I really wanted to waste his time and see how he was conning people. I realised he was using the random harmless errors that the PC generates to make him look like he knew what was wrong with my PC. But i had no errors, I made them up just to see what he would make me do next. I asked to call him back due to the loud background noise. He hesistated to give me any details and asked me if there was a problem 3 or 4 times but eventually gave in to me because I insisted that I had to call back due to the loud noise levels.

He gave me the following details:
Name: KEVIN (lol)
Phone: (02)080035397 (obviously I didnt call him)
Employee ID: 109768 (lol)

I figured that they were all lies, but wanted to see what else he would do.

I asked to speak to his boss,
Asked him what do u want from me now that you know I have errors.

He said he could help me if I gave him my credit card details and pay once for long lasting help!
I asked him how many people he conned and entered into a swearing competition with him.

Classic.

Mollymook NSW Australia
I have just had the usual call, windows/microsoft technician telling me my computer was bugged. I told him that i couldn't use it at the moment because it had a bug and could I ring him back when it was fixed, he gave me a name Anthony Jones( complete with Indian accent) phone 61291916554.
I can't find this Number at any reverse telephone number systems
Can anyone help yes 61 is Australia and 2 is NSW
Adam

This happened to me too..same story. they eaven gave me a sydney number (0280035397) to conferm when they told me they were based in sydney...i didnt call just played with tham i eaven made her so angry she skreamed in some indian language...haha

Got one today, dont remember his name but he said he was from microsoft, he gave me a number as proof but when i asked what suburb in melbourne he was calling from he said it wasnt important, i said if youre going to give me the address then youd think youd also tell me the suburb, he get really defensive and the 'supervisor' got on the phone telling me that i had made him cry! hahah

he then went on to abuse me and we exchanged words, he then said he was going to bomb me or something ridiculous, was hilarious though!

Was told to type PREFETCH into my run box. Knew this was a scam and kept the chic going for awhile. She eventually got her supervisor and he tried explaining what to do. Kept him going for awhile until he asked what was on my screen. I replied "This call is being traced". The guy started cursing me, calling me a mother f--ker. I laughed so hard into the phone. He kept cursing. Best bit of fun I have had with a scam caller ever.

Hi just had the call midday UK.

Very insistent that I had a windows computer even after saying I normally used Linux. Then he said I must be dual booting.

With some time on my hands ( England cricket at lunch) I humoured him to learn a little about the scam. Booted up the Virtual machine with winXP then usual click on start look for manage as an option and then onto the supervisor.

Search the eventvwr could only find a warning triangle for winXP not yet registered which stopped after the date I registered. Much consternation from the Indian, further 'Phishing' in the security area only found a vmnet warning which I told him was irrelevant. Exasperation rising he then tried to get me to link to his engineers to sort it all out. Then I hit him with the body blow it wasn't connected to the internet and he still countered I needed virus protection and eventually became abusive. Only managed to string him on for 17 minutes but great laugh all the same. Bonus I found out I could tidy up the vmnet error so no triagles at all now.

Just received this call tonight in NSW, Australia. I told him if they had my details like he said that they could feel free to send me an email and then we could talk. He said, "your computer will be hacked very soon by us" and I hung up.

Im in the uk and have just been called by this lot ,they said my computer would crash in 2 hours if i didnt let them help me using remote help and they could do this at a nice cheap price . I hung up after a bit ,but just wondered is there a way of clearing up the event viewer as this is how i found this site .

3.30pm on the 1st of July. Scam still going in Ballarat (near Melbourne). 5 calls, one after the other from the "John". Gave me the number 02080145555. Had the same scam call 2 days ago. Happy phising :)

I just received this call at my mum's house and she had been in contact with Telstra recently due to some technical issues, I thought they were from Telstra and i did the whole eventvwr thing n wasnt really payin attention as i was in a hurry and thought they were from Telstra n wanted to fix mum's computer. They then took me to a www.logmein.com site and proceeded to try and gain remote access, when I finally started paying attention and didnt see any Telstra names anywhere so i abruptly said Where r u from? Then said I don't know u! and swiftly hung up, disconnected n switched my computer off. I am in trouble with him being able to gain access again now?

I've had the call 4 times over the last month (New Zealand), always during tea-time. I played with them the first couple of times but the novelty wore off. The fact is that they will likely find it quite easy to scam people who are trusting and I'm really annoyed. We should be able to trust each other.

Our governments seem to be ineffective in getting India's government to be effective - perhaps we should simply apply consumer pressure and boycott companies who use Indian call centres.

I read the article in motherjones.com about the Indian Call Centre training. For some of the employees, phishing was their favourite sort of job.

I just got a call from PCTech at 10:30 tonight, seems Microsoft hired them to help with calling their customers about a malware they/we are all downloading. Ya because Microsoft cares so much about little old me. I just hung up on the still Indean sounding guy, he tried to call me back 3 times but I just hung up without even saying hello.
Just wanted to let people know how far this has gone. I live in Quebec Canada..
I just don't understand how this is still going on, years later and still exactly the same. Can't even imagine how much money they have scammed, I think I am in the wrong business..

Even funnier when they call and you don't actually have a windows based computer in the house. I kept asking what part of the window do i write in to put the eventviewer and he didn't catch on that I was pretending to write on my kitchen window. Even asked if it was a matter of concern that my neighbours might be watching me write on the window. As expected, the operator got very abusive but at least I had the pleasure of wasting his time

Funny, but true story about www.24x7pchelp.com. I called their 1-877-523-2355 number to complain that one of their technicians had called me claiming to be an authorized Microsoft Service representative, and I had just discovered that I had been lied to. NOTE: Microsoft agents will NEVER call customers unless the customer asks them to call or fills in a support with phone case. Contact Microsoft Fraud Line at 1-800-785-3448 to report them. The very nice young man who answered assured me that none of their representatives would claim that. I insisted one had and gave him the technicians name and time of call. Again he insisted that they never claim to be authorized Microsoft service providers. Then I heard shouting in the background. The young man excused himself for a minute and as I listened, I clearly heard an older man with an Indian accent yelling, “If a customer asks if we are authorized Microsoft software providers, you say YES! YOU SAY YES!” When the young man returned on the phone, I said, “I see they are teaching you to lie.” He was at a loss for words. A minute later, he said he needed to go, but would call me back in 15 minutes. He never did. When I called back one hour later to reconnect with him, I was unable to, and unfortunately I hadn’t gotten his name. I suspect he was probably an innocent computer science grad who had no idea what kind of company he’s gotten in to.

they called me in (I live in Canada) 5 minutes ago, indian voice and want me to enter in a run box of the computer "eventvwr" and I dind't I told then that they are a scam and shut down the phone!
I also asked him some info, he said his name was " Victor" and also can contact him at 19055811797 windows service center in Toronto. I didn't believe anything and then they still calling and I just dont answer the phone!

Hi

Now they have come to Denmark as well :(

Just got a call from "systemproassist" and it all sounded ok until they want me to fill out a form incl. my creditcard details.
They even said that they will not claim any money the first two weeks, then I could see if the service was good in those two weeks and then pay - that made me really suspesius.
When I asked where they were, they start telling me "Denmark" then I asked for a person that could speak Danish but then they was suddenly based in Australia.
I asked why both persons I spoke to had Indian accent but they claimed they was born and raised in Australia, by Australian parents.
I've been to Australia and have friends who are from Australia - the accent didn't match

Had the exact same call just minutes ago, all I said was i'm sorry I don't have a computer, she said not even a laptop I said no (haha) but she did say sorry to trouble you maam

I have had this call around 5-6 times the last couple of months, I knew straight away it was a scam. It seems to happen after I download from torrents. Anyway now when they call I just say sorry I think you may have the wrong number as I don't own a computer and they hang up straight away.

I just had a similar call from a person with an Indian accent too. I kept telling him I could not understand his accent and to please speak slower. He guided me through the "Start>Computer>Manage" process to find the event viewer. I did not install anything. I kept asking him for his company name. He said, "Microsoft Security Solutions" or something like that. I kept asking him is this was a sales call which he denied. I also asked him how he found my phone number. He said through my computer's IP address. My cell is not tied to my IP address. Thank God my pay as you go cell phone ran out of minutes before he completed his mission.
This took place in Nampa, Idaho, USA. Unbelievable!

Just got off the line with "Zack Larin" from "ITech Planet" ... at least, their call centre in Mumbai. When I asked for a callback number, he gave me 205-588-8841. Same scam - wanted to review my event logs. He was brave enough to press on even after I said I was an IT professional ... apparently he didn't realize that an IT professional is never going to run something recommended by a random caller.....

If you want to hear what they sound like in action, I got an opportunity to record it just the other day when they called. I also had some fun with them until they figured out what I was doing.

http://www.endlevel.com/IndianPhoneScam.mp3

Enjoy :)

Got a call earlier today regarding this exact thing. He did indeed have an Indian accent and told me to do the exact things that this article describes. Of course I was suspicious, but to make sure I had him spell out "eventvwr", acting as if my English was rather poor while I searched the net for more information about the program. First word I see when I searched eventvwr on google was the word "Scam", and with a quick "farewell" I hung up.

When it comes to your computer, simply be suspicious. I read that people from microsoft does not contact you unless you have yourself contacted them previously. If you know nothing; do nothing.

Also, I seriously found the story to be extremely stupid. He didn't give any exact numbers, but that a large amount of windows computers have experienced serious bugs? I think I would have heard something about that on the news or whatever.

Hi Everyone,

I'm the lead Tech for Australian Computer Doctors Pty. Ltd, I've had a number of our clients whom have reported this event posted:

http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/314295/windows_event_viewer_phishing_scam_remains_active/

Recently we have trapped a call from IP : 66.96.160.138 or Telcomhub.com. Tucows who host the domain are looking into this and i hope to get a reply shortly. Please advise all friends and family that random calls to fix your PC is not normal (Microsoft would never do this).... and trusting your local IT person is always the best action. Remember that everyone of our computers has a unique address (http://www.whatismyip.com), unless the person knows this..... they don't know your pc.

Do you have a facebook group for your blog?

Hi:
Thanks for posting this article. I have had 4 calls in the past week. Today's was virtually intelligible - the caller was Indian, as per usual, but I could barely understand her. When I asked what company she was from, the response was something like " Internet support systems"
What threw me was her stating my address - it is about all I understood of the call - so this caller got to speak longer than most. When she asked me to turn on my computer so they could fix the problem - I finally put her out of her misery and said no thank you. Can't we stop this?

Like all of us here, same experience several times over... I'm in Melbourne. But I wanted to mention to anyone who has been scammed, don't forget that your credit card basically comes with a protection for this sort of thing, all is not lost. Be sure to ring them up as soon as you can, detail the scam and your payment (date time etc) and then you can begin the process of "chargeback" or charge reversal. You will need to post or fax the form they will give you, and it will take possibly a few months, but its really quite easy to do - don't let the buggers just get away with it. Also, for good measure, cancel the card you used. That way it will not enable anyone to use those payment details again, it might put you out of a card for a week or so, but peace of mind is gold! Cheers all

Just had the same call, Indian guy on the line. The line was very poor though, which caused me to think before I do,, whilst on the phone with this guy he gave me my initials,, home address and everything so I calmed down a bit. When he asked me to do the whole eventvwr thing, I asked for my ID number as verification, whilst searching for scams on google. First result, this site. I asked for my ID number again (social security number?) and he just hung up. Seems like they are now targeting South Africa as well, which is where I am located.

The calls are now coming in Canada. Just got called tonite. Indian folks again - Selina and Daniel John (nice indian name) with their superviosr's name "dave". OMG please come up with better scripts. Same old story: Windows Service Center calling from Melbourne, Aus. Asked for tel# and address got no office address as they are "GLOBAL" and the tel# 0388070905. Asked them how they know about "malicious files on my pc" and challenged them for my IP address. Obviously they didn't know ~ stoopid.

Just had similar call, I asked the Indian woman, 'Are you trying to get remote access to my computer?' and she became very irate, saying, 'What would I gain looking at your computer?', Not, as you might expect, ' what is remote access?' or "Why would you ask that?' or indeed being confused at the accusation at all. Sad way to earn a living.

I had the same call this afternoon. Knowing full well it was a scam, I recorded it.
Played along as if I believed him and was following through on the actions - but instead typed "eventvwr" into google, and came up with this thread.
After a few minutes I laughed, and told him I was aware that this was a scam and that I was recording the call.
We talked for a bit more - then he asked me please not to do anything about this call - not to take this any further.
"Why?" I asked?
"Because I will lose my job then" he replied.
So they are using people in the Philipines, who are trying to hold onto their jobs - very sad.

I recorded exactly what happens if you let them access your computer on this YouTube video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5wvXnpeMSk

You may find it interesting.

Jim

They called me and I called them out. The one supervisor Dave called me a F&$@ing cracker while attempting to get me to click on the download button on their phony website.

ABHISHEK(DAVID BROWN): 8420016806
ABHISHEK MITRA(HR MANAGER):9007045872
OTHER GUYS NUMBERS LIKE..:8420016801,8420016802,8420016803..& SO ON..ONLY LAST TWO DIGITS VARIES...CALL AND ASK YOUR MONEY BACK,.,,,REPORT IT...THEY LIVE IN KOLKATA,WEST BENGAL,SALTLAKE....

Had been awaiting this call and got one the other week.
I'm in IT and my wife was warned about this. Kept the caller going for 3 seperate calls, in total approx 1 hour all up (till we got bored).
The most memorable events was:
-when asked to go to website I went to youtube and played wiggles songs on phone. Left room and came back latter. The tenacious caller was still on the phone.I then proceeded to tell him off, "you said you'd fix my computer, and you send me to this music site, what is this crap?!?"
-gave my name as Seymour Butts. I thought this would have tipped them off that I was onto them, luckily they were clueless.
-Told them that the commands weren't working. Took them a while to realise that I was referring to a MAC.
-Might be a bit rude, but told them that I heard that the two best AV software available was the AG Spit or the Lux Swallows, then asked if they preferred to Spit or Swallow.

In the end I got bored and told them that I knew this was a scam and that they should be ashamed of themselves.

Brazingly enough, got a call from "Mac" the next day looking for Seymour and wanting to help fix my laptop.

Just got the call pretty much exactly the same LOL
Most of the time i was just going "...uh yeh, but what about it?"
then i heard the punch line. "Your software on your motherboard is expired." lolol what? "we'll send you some antivirus and scan for 100 dollars" Yeah alright man. no thanks.

Pretty funny.

Just had the same call from "Mike" (that was my first clue it was a scam...he was definitely East Indian - ya MIKE, thats really believable!) When he began with "No ma'am not to worry, I am the Sr. Technician for OTS, I am going to help you fix your computer ma'am". When I told him that I didn't trust him and would not be giving him any information off my computer, he told me to call back and verify him....Ya ok! I'll call a 877 number (that anyone can get) and verify you are "Mike the Sr Tech thats going to try and screw me". He then called me 3 more times and I finally told him that I gave the 1-877-697-9554 to the police and they will call him! Seriously, don't waste your time with these dishonest *@#%s! Unfortunately, they are making it hard to not hold it against East Indians!

I have now had a total of SEVENTEEN calls from these people. They are remarkably persistent, if nothing else. It's a shame that they are destroying the good name of ALL Indian people. Now, if i hear any type of Indian accent, i simply hang up without acknowledging the caller. Sorry Indian people who are honestly just doing their daily job at a call-centre, but that's how it is. Your criminal scammers are ruining your countries reputation,... and i would honestly suggest your Government does something about it,.... before ALL trust in India, and Indian people, is terminally eroded world-wide. Then it will be too late for you all.

I had my experience yesterday. 2 phone calls from them. Called themselves "Techforhelp". I kept them going for over an hour, ended with me playing them Alan Jacksons latest hits, rudely "Shane" the Indian hung up on me. They haven't called me back, I don't know why?

just got the same call; was transferred to "manager" who claimed to be Kelvin Jones of Support4urpc and gave me telephone numbers shown on their webpage (support4urpc.com). This scammer phoned 8 times during the day, no messages, no caller ID information. Both the female who first spoke to me and Kelvin Jones had East Indian accents. I declined their assistance.

Still happening in the UK. I hope no one ever allows anyone into their PC who they don't know. Ask them for the link to Microsoft's pages that tell them how to fix it yourself. That seems to be Microsoft's model of doing things so any valid Company would know this.

Holy S*&T Leanne, i had the exact same call today from the same guy, gave me the exact same phone number too. He was from "sydney", BULLS%^T!!!! I hung up on him and he tried calling me 4 more times.

It happened to me an hour ago in Belgium and thought I'd run a search on and came to this page. started with eventvwr. then asked me to run 'inf hacking' and then asked me to enter www.team.... at this point I told him to send me an official Microsoft email with details of what I need to do. Did brick myself a little bit at the start and feel like a bit of a plonker for being on phone for 15 minutes but i just happened to have loads of errors and freezing going on lately on my computer.
Does anyone know if I click run 'inf hacking' anything will happen. I've got my anti-malware doing a scan at the minute just to be sure. Let me know. Cheers

Hi Guys, Just got a call from Joycelyn... Same crap...... Contact number given is 02 61008129.....

OMG.... I just got a call. I shut down my computer before anything happened, Hope they didnt peep into my computer details i am bit scared now. People we tend to fall pray pretty easily. Please take care people.
I live in australia. Its still active.

Ahh I remember getting this phone call about a month ago. I felt like having a bit of fun with the poor bugger who called me apperantly called "Andrew" (Stereotypical name much?) So I told him that the police had pinpointed their "department of operation" and all employess or anyone that had anything affiliated with the scam would be seen in court and sued for fraudery by microsft. " Any idiot would figure that I was lying in exception to a certain group of people who are called telemarketers. "Andrew" suddenly got extremely abusive with me saying that "I will **** sue you you stupid ****". I told him the entire video was being recorded as did many others and would be used against him. He immediatley hung, leaving me with quite a delightful trollface.

I can't count the number of calls I've had from these clowns, I work from home so sometimes I have a chat and hang up, sometimes not. Today I went thru the spiel, wrote down the command blah (u can tell I'm not real pc savvy) instead of entering it to investigate later and when he asked me what the computer said (?) I said "do you think I'm an idiot" to which he replied yes, I lost it a bit then (use your imagination) and hung up. So that brings me here.

Can I blow a whistle down the line the next time these goons call, and not get call back at 3am from some half deaf git seeking revenge?

This needs to stop, like a lot have said b4 me, it doesn't do the Indian people a lot of good.

Funny thing, this is the second time that I've heard of someone saying that their computer works better after paying these scammers.
They have a person's credit card details and have installed spyware on the computer; I doubt that they are fixing the NON-EXISTENT issues that they are claiming people's computers have.
Or perhaps they are do gooders, randomly fixing people's computers for a reasonble fee (insert sarcastic tone where applicable)?
Probably more likely further proof of the placebo effect perhaps.

Hey, I upgraded my graphics dance-card and PSU today and still since Windows has been a lot slower - slower starting up and slower in general also. Conduct is better in games albeit, which is fitting as that's why I bought the graphics card.
The radiation on my in the event that is ON ALL OCCASIONS blinking and I can EVER hear the spot whirring sounds, both things that inured to to occasionally occur when opening a listing or roughly when the computer was opinion, but when I check up on my CPU convention it is not extraordinary at all (at 5% fittingly at the moment). My retention is also alone condign second to half full.
I cannot think what the problem is, I'm sure I've done something wrong - here are my specs:

Intel Core 2 Q9400
Asus P5Q-Pro
Radeon HD 6950
4GB SQUEEZE
XFX 850w
Windows7 64-bit

My old specs were the same but with two HD 4850s and a Storm 900w PSU.

Thanks
Baby Grace x

Hello guys

An Indian guy has written the inside of these people. Each and every detail is there. Check it how they are operating such a big Scam and no one is doing anything about it.
indiancallcenterscam.blogspot.com

Just recieved this call at my work in Scotland. I do IT here so I was not in any way convinced by the guy's chat but kept them online as I was curious as to whether they were going to try and get me to divulge my bank details or install something on my computer or what. I tried to be as good a customer as possible, saying "so what do you want me to do?" but they were completely inept. The first guy made no sense at all, and the next guy (the "senior technician") didn't even know how to do the scam properly. He asked me to type eventvwr into search rather than run. This doesn't bring anything up. He interpreted the fact that eventvwr didn't appear in the search as proof that my computer was in serious danger. The line went dead twice and he phoned back both times. He was very pushy, but seemed to be unsure as to what he was pushing towards. Eventually I told him in no uncertain terms that he was wasting his time and he hasn't called back.

I hope that most of these scammers are of a similar callibre, as if that's the case then even the most it terrified of us should be able to sleep soundly :-)

They are still trying to run the scam. i had a call last week from them, but i was in bed, and said i was not going to go down stairs and turn on my computer. so i got the call again today. when they told me to type in the eventvwr i said i did, and tried to play along for a while, mean while i googled eventvwr and found this and other ones stating this to be a scam. after keeping him on the line for about 15min. i told him i was reading about how this was a scam, and finally hung up on him. Indian sounding guy claiming to work for microsoft. Hope nobody falls for this stuff. and glad that Google leads me here so quickly.

Can't believe this scam is still ongoing, so over it! The first time they called mum answered but passed the phone over to me. At first I thought it was real, but halfway through I got suspicious and told them I can't get access to internet for whatever reason. The Indian guy was so eager he was getting angry, for sure he was thinking he had this one in the bag. Pftsh! So I just hung up, then he called back and dad just lashed out on him telling him don't call back.

I just got another call today here in Aus (05/12/11) . Told them I had a Mac. Guy was lost for words and hung up.

I have been receiving many calls from an overseas call centre using VOIP asking to run command “Eventvwr” on my pc to show malware running and they would help me to correct it. As they called me, I asked for the number so I could call back to verify them. They gave out 18504541150 and the person I was speaking to cyrus Watson ms4403 (employer ID) . Not an aussie number,I have lodged a request for information from Telstra about blocking this number ID blocked. Thanks

Yep, got that call today, but i had some sense not to give my credit card details to an unknown number. Im glad i didn't, i just saved $185 or I would of had to pay for a crap program. I thanks all of you left a comment as you all saved my behind! ;)

Re above, call all ame in around 18:15, and caller when quierried said whe was calling from "Bingo" which was part of windows...Scam line was as previous posts..

Just recieved this call at my work in Scotland. I do IT here so I was not in any way convinced by the guy's chat but kept them online as I was

I had "the call" this morning- the ID showed it coming from the Czech republic! I live in Spain, so the caller had to call a Spanish number. Logically enough, I answered in Spanish, but he took no notice and spoke (pretty bad) English and apparently knew my name. I asked him where he was ringing from and he said "Australia"- I said it must be costing them a fortune, but he said "no, we have a special line". Hm. I asked him where he got my details from, and he said "Microsoft records". Hm again. So I told him to e-mail the information to me, since obviously they would have my address if they had my number. No e-mail (yet!). Hm hm hm.
A friend's mother keeps an old cassette recorder next to the phone and says "Hold on while I get my husband" and then plays jolly music for as long as necessary. By the time she gets back the caller has gone...

I live in London Canada and we're not immune either. Had a call yesterday and played along with the guy for a while. Claimed I was late for a meeting then and asked him to call back tomorrow. I figure the more time he spends with me the less time he would have to play this on someone who might fall for it.

I can't believe this started and it's still going strong in 2012! They must be suckering people into it. I just had a call from the cheeky sods and instead of entering eventvwr into the run command box as requested, I googled it. Glad I did as this site was what came up, so I read the guy the article... suprisingly I was hung up on...

theyre invading america! i trolled the indian so hard and even started to talk with an indian accent haha

23/1/2012
I just had a call from "sydney" australia Windows to let me know there was some dangerous activity on my computer and if I didnt do something about it my computer would crash. all I had to do was enter eventvwr under start run, but I asked for their number to confirm who I was dealing with and was given 0280050590 so before ringing I did an net search and came up with this site. Thank you!

I have a fair bit of fun with these people. I lead them on for a good 20 mins if i have the time. Misunderstand instructions, play dumb, pretend they sent me to porn sites whilst they are telling me to go to thier remote access site.
I figure the more I give them the run around the less time they have to screw with more vulnerable people.
I usually finish with something along the lines of I work for the federal police and they hang up pretty fast.

here are two phone numbers they called me from if we all call them......................... BUG the HELL out of them!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

213-333-3206 &
206-397-1126

these numbers actually accept calls. LOL

Unreal!! Got a similar call to all the above. Asked me what system i am using, they are responding to a lot of problems with corrupted files on Windows. Asked me to check and when I couldn't see "start search" on my screen she said I must have many corrupted files. Then she transferred me to a Microsoft technician. Alarm bells rang when I was asked to type in "logmein" and I went no further as I had no idea who this person of Indian origin was. He said" so mam you don't wish to go any further" !! Very polite. So pleased to see these various versions of the same scam.

Great post.

हम हैकर्स और चोर कलाकार हैं.लेकिन यह हमारा काम है. यह खत्म हो.im के 17 बजे बस माताओं से बाहर चले गए. मैं कड़ी मेहनत और यह लानत यकीन है कि इसके लायक है.मैं आप की तरह कर जांच करने के लिए इंतजार नहीं आलसी लोग वहाँ बाहर बुला im रहा. if nobody understands what this say then copy and look it up on the google translator.

Got 3 of these calls in 3 days. I let them talk me through the first few steps without doing anything and then said Oops a window has just come up saying that I have loaded onto YOUR computer a virus which is emailing the various security forces and police forces and your computer will shut down in 15 minutes.

Nothing like putting the fear of god into the caller. First time there was a stunned silence before they hurridly set goodbye. Second one was rather rude! Another trick is to fool around with them and find it impossible to find the icons and then telling them you are running Linux!

Hi,

I got this phishing scam, and am ashamed to say I went so far as to let him 'login' to my computer from a remote area. He made me download a program that basically let him access my computer, and I saw him running it from their database. He said he was going to 'login to show me the problems I have.' He went on the eventplanner thing and showed me all the error messages. He did this for maybe a minute before I started panicking. I told him to get the hell off or I was going to call the cops. He got off my computer, and I uninstalled the program. I'm just worried.. Can anyone help me? Does the company (carensolutions.com) have any of my private information / are they still operating in my system??

I need answers =[ I'm afraid I let them in and it's too late. I uninstalled the program they used to remotely 'run' my computer. I'm of the optimistic attitude that if they just wanted to sell me something, they probably left me alone since I didn't buy. and as long as I didn't give my credit card I'm fine. Can anyone give me advice??

You can email me at my email metal_lollyp0p@hotmail.com

On 5-16-12 I received a call (number blocked from caller ID) made the mistake of answering, man with strong accent (from India) said he was calling from Windows. He said they detected a lot of viruses on my computer. I purchased a new laptop less than 1-month ago. Haven't used it much. anyway, he convinced me to look at an ID number on my computer to verify he was legit. HA! Anyway, Before I knew it he had accessed my computer remotely. Scared me with all the virus crap. When I realized that I had made a mistake, it was too late. I told them I couldn't afford the $250.00 for their virus protection, managed to get them off my computer. Now, I have to do a system restore using the repair discs I have, according to my IT friend. I feel like such an idiot. I know better than this.... Well, it won't happen again.

just had the same call, said he was from windows tech support, I have an online infection, sit at my computer so he can sort it out, if you don't your computer will crash and not ever work again. i ask him for telephone number and his name.
He said ROKI on 80018008485321, I said you are a scammer please take my number off your database, he was very persistent I said I will report you to Microsoft, which #i have. This needs stopping as I have had about 20 calls, very annouying

Hi there everyone, it's my first visit at this site, and paragraph is truly fruitful designed for me, keep up posting such articles.

got the phone call. told the lady i thought it was a scam. thought she was a bad person for doing this and hung up!. SHE CALLED back would you believe!
played along and when asked to type in eventvwr - did so but into google! and came across this post.

i f i get one of these again i am going to string them on if i have time.

i think this woman actually believed she was doing me a favour!

If you want to improve your experience only keep visiting this
site and be updated with the latest news posted here.

Recieved this call today - clearly sounded suspicious, so googled it, found this article, and so realised what was going on.

Since he was trying to scam me, I thought I should at least waste his time, so I asked him to hold for a second then left the phone in the bedroom and left the room. I came back 30 minutes later, realised he was still on the line, and hung up - he called back 5 more times before I answered and told him I knew it was a scam and hung up.

I do not know if it's just me or if everybody else experiencing problems with your website. It seems like some of the text on your content are running off the screen. Can someone else please provide feedback and let me know if this is happening to them as well? This might be a problem with my browser because I've had this happen previously.

Thanks

It's difficult to find educated people about this subject, however, you seem like you know what you're talking about!
Thanks

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