phone call from Microsoft SCAM

Goodness, the microsoft scam has been going on for years - an elderly friend of mine fell for it and had a large sum of money taken from her bank account (she'd given the caller her details!!!).

We get the calls occasionally, I either say I haven't got a computer or just put the phone down.

Good to get a heads up though. Thanks jeanie.

Yes of course. I'm sure there are still some who haven't heard about it...

Just ask them for a password (they don't know you haven't set a password with Microsoft) - it usually means they put the phone down

My friend also got stung with these people,lost a few hundred pounds.

I had one on Tuesday, said I didn't have a computer, then half an hour later had a phone call from the same number. This person said she had noticed that I had an increase in unwanted phone calls. So I told her that I didn't mind as sometimes it was the only person I spoke to all day.
After she put the phone down, my grandson said, "That was one of those fibs again, wasn't it?"
I told him he's not allowed to do it.

Had a call before from someone claiming to be a security expect from Microsoft. He claimed their system monitored something wrong in my computer and he offered to help fix it. I didn't know about the scam, then. But I thought what the caller said was suspicious. No way my computer wound send alerts to Microsoft. Lol! I got a MAC. I hung up.

It looks like this is one scam that just won't go away. I found several threads of complaints at www.callercenter.com and I was amazed to read that the earliest complaints on this particular scam was lodged way back 16 of September, 2011!!! This scam's been around for a long time now and it's still thriving.

We kept getting these calls and after a number of times putting the phone down on them I decided to string them along!!
So they asked me to press the windows key and r. I did so they asked what happened I said nothing. We kept on like this with them asking me to do things and me religiously following their instructions and getting nowhere. Eventually some bright spark had the idea to ask what operating system I was using. "Oh Linux" I said. they put the phone down quick and I have not been bothered for some time!

I just tell them I have an Apple Mac, which isn't true but it shuts them up.

In the last 24 hrs I have had two of these calls. The last one was from a young man called Yardley David! He must have been new to it as he stumbled over his script and maybe got his false name the wrong way round.
I just give a huge laugh and tell them to 'shove off ' with their scam! I wonder if their English training translates 'shove off'!

Perhaps there could be a Gransnet game for phrases used to get them to go away - or even just confuse them! X

The last one I received was also about my computer. I just kept saying 'hello, hello. Is there someone there. I can't hear you. It's a terrible line' They kept trying to talk to me and I kept up with same refrain. They hung up. Result!!

Janthea, I'll try that one next time! X

DS2 pretended to be totally taken in: 'Oh, really? How terrible! What can I do about it? Please tell me what's wrong with it....' And so on, until they couldn't answer any of his questions and cut him off.