WARNING PC TECH SUPPORT

[southernpie]

Today I received a phone call from the number 011111. The man on the phone told me he was from Seelon (not sure how spelt) Tech Support and that he was calling on behalf of Microsoft because my PC was not up dating Windows correctly. I knew immediately this was not true so asked how he got my phone number. He told me that he got it from the International Router System and that every time one connects to the Internet the phone number is logged. At this point I told him he was a con artist and hung up.

Be warned if you get a phone call like this it is someone unscrupulous and that what they want is for you to give them remote access to your pc to enable them to install malicious software enabling them to steal valuable information from your PC.

If you get one of these calls report it to your internet/phone provider.

[Mike]

On the other hand, if you can be bothered, a good tactic is to string them along for 30 minutes or so and then hang up.

[medlocke]

I got one from a guy called moses last week saying he was from some company on behalf of Dell, he was obviously from Cameroon or somewhere, strung him along for ten minutes, he kept asking what the screen said so i told him it said youracockjockey, he didn't understand after 5 times told him to F O and put phone

[ancientnloyal]

I love these phonecalls, my wife doesn't. The local church came round to my door, needless to say I had a field day

[bonnieboy]

I got a phone call this morning about the same thing,i said have you phoned me before,he said no then he said he may have done,i said the man wanted to know about my computer,but we got cut off so i did not give him all my details,and i thought he might phone back,straight away he said it was him and would i give him all the details now,i said what details do you want,he mentioned a bit about the computer,then he said did i have my bank details,i said hold on a bit i will go and get them,so i left him on the phone from 9-45pm till i came back from a walk about 11-30,he as not phoned me back yet.

[josie andrews]

I had one of these about 18 months ago :exc:

[medlocke]

i just had a phone call from a withheld number, saying that the warranty on my emersion heater has run out, seeing as the heater was fitted a few months before i was made redundant from Richard Woodalls the warranty would have run out several years ago, i had a similar call around 3 month back, surely if it was genuine they would have phoned back within days of me putting the phone down on them, has anyone heard of this sort of scam before or is it just me being paranoid in these days of scams and rip offs?

[markill]

i just had a phone call from a withheld number, saying that the warranty on my emersion heater has run out, seeing as the heater was fitted a few months before i was made redundant from Richard Woodalls the warranty would have run out several years ago, i had a similar call around 3 month back, surely if it was genuine they would have phoned back within days of me putting the phone down on them, has anyone heard of this sort of scam before or is it just me being paranoid in these days of scams and rip offs?

The chances are it isn't a scam in the way you think it is, but more of a marketing exercise. A company that deal in special warranty style insurance contracts will have aquired a list of people who bought boilers a certain amount of time ago and will be going down that list to see if there is anyone that has lost their manufacturers warrantly and might want to buy an extended warranty through them. I suppose it should only be considered a rip off if they charge you money that you don't want to spend, otherwise its more than likely just a waste of your time as you might already have some sort of extended warranty or just don't want it.

What we don't realise is before we all became so scared and paranoid about scams or identity theft, we would have given our name to companies we've bought stuff from without ticking a box to say we don't want to be contacted (the box might not even have existed when we bought whatever we bought). These companies now sell our information to other companies who might try to sell us something by contacting us. I think they do it by phone because its easier to convince someone that something benefits them if you talk to them, but its relatively very much more expensive to go house to house these days than use the phone.

I think we're a bit too quick these days to assume everything is a 'scam' when it might not be that but just a nuisance cold call from a salesperson trying to sell you something you may not need or want so you don't have to buy it. The way I go about it is if it sounds like soemthing worth looking into i ask them to send me something in the post, if i don't i tell them i'm not interested, and if they become a nuisance i ask them to take me off their list so i don't get called again.

If they ever ask for your bank details before you've agreed to buy something from them then you should probably be more worried about whats going on.