Contacted by someone claiming to be from "Quantum PC Support" regarding viruses ... anyone else?

[Fab Foodie]

Just had an unsolicited phone call from someone claiming to be from Quantum PC support, who informed me that they are the authourised support centre for Windows, Linux etc and had contacted me as a registered user of Windows OS systems regarding 2 new viruses going around and what I should do about them. He then asked if I was in front of my computer ....

Well, unfortunately I take short shrift from cold callers and managed to pi22 him off to the point where he put the phone down. I was just tring to ascertain the genuineness of his call and what he was really after, It try not to take this stuff at face value.

Has anybody else had this or know anything about these Viruses???
Anybody know about quantum PC support?
Why is this not in the news?

Posted in Cafe for max exposure.

 

[Profpointy]

It's a scam obviously - best thing you can do is waste his time for as long as your patience lasts to save him scamming someone less savvy

 

[gaz]

It is a common trick.. Seeing as most households have a computer and most computers run windows.. they just take a lucky dip..

You did well to piss him off, it will usually end up with them getting control of your computer.

 

[david k]

It is a common trick.. Seeing as most households have a computer and most computers run windows.. they just take a lucky dip..

You did well to piss him off, it will usually end up with them getting control of your computer.

whats the advantage of this?

 

[Rickshaw Phil]

It's a common scam. They will attempt to direct you to a website which will download viruses (often ones which add your PC to a botnet which will be used to spam people) or they will attempt to get remote control of your PC which will allow them access to all your private information. Sometimes both.

It has been in the news several times in the past and I'm sure will be again in the not too distant future.

 

[GetAGrip]

Ha Ha, Yeah, a couple of months back. The guy said that the problem was specific to my area.
I told him in a lovely kind voice, how glad I was that he had phoned, and informed him that his call was being tracked and is also being recorded by police request. He ended the call

 

[PBancroft]

Its a very common trick - but enough people unwittingly fall for it to make it worthwhile.

Oddly enough I've never been contacted by these sorts of people... I'd love to know what they made of my virus infested Chromebook.

 

[PBancroft]

whats the advantage of this?

For one thing install whatever they want in the name of "protecting" you - such as a keylogger for recording your passwords, credit card info that sort of thing, or as somebody else pointed out adding you to a botnet. There are plenty of fake anti-virus packages out there that do similar. Or it might be more mundane, where they could point out an innocuous but scary sounding file in the system files which they will then, of course, offer support on "fixing" - for a price of course.

In a way, the existence of these phonecalls demonstrates how good software based security is becoming - thieves and con artists are falling back on human fallibility instead of "hacking" into computers directly, but then thats a problem which is much harder to fix.

 

[Nigel-YZ1]

My sister-in-law had this scam in February. She was partly taken in, until they asked for money.

I'd love them to call me so I can waste their time.

 

[TheDoctor]

Had a fair few of these.
I alternate between asking if it's the Sparcstation or the Amiga, or asking if they can't get a better job and how they should be ashamed.
My record so far is keeping one talking for twenty minutes.

 

[MrJamie]

They or someone similar called my dad while i was there talking to him, so I took the call (as im a pc geek) and asked them some questions, the call centre people are mostly scripted but quite proficient at answering questions with lies and you can see how less tech savvy people would easy get scammed. They had name, address as well as phone number obviously and make some general statements about your pc, about running windows, about it being slower recently, things taking longer to open, which im sure are usually correct amongst average users and give the impression they know what theyre talking about.

Even if you question them as to how they detected the virus, their answers are fairly believable claiming that windows reports infections to them so they can help people and that they have your details from when you registered your computer. They were also happy to state that they work for microsoft uk.

You can try to be awkward but you can only waste their time and theyll just hang up and dial the next person if you tell them off. IIRC theres some calls recorded on youtube of people really stringing them along and playing dumb.

 

[ianrauk]

My sister-in-law had this scam in February. She was partly taken in, until they asked for money.

I'd love them to call me so I can waste their time.

There are some great You Tube vids of people doing this.

 

[PBancroft]

There are some great You Tube vids of people doing this.

Indeed. There are also some good ones which explain how the scam works. YouTube is pretty awesome in this regard.

 

[Nigel-YZ1]

Indeed. There are also some good ones which explain how the scam works. YouTube is pretty awesome in this regard.

With my sister-in-law they had her issue the 'assoc' command in a DOS window, and told her that they knew it was her PC they were watching if the 'CLSID' at the end of the list matched one they quoted.

 

[Davidc]

It's quite a well known scam,and I've been called twice (one call was aimed at my wife's business)

I'd read about it and spotted it quickly both times. First one hung up when I asked if it was the one running ubuntu (Linux) or the Mac, second one I was feeling bored and played thick. Hung up after about 20 minutes trying to get me to run a command prompt window.

If I get another I'm going to claim to be using an ipad.