I endured a long "technical assistance" call of the sort documented in this forum as "eventvwr scam." Others have explained it in this forum with topics that that include the word "scam."
The caller (who had a heavy foreign accent) claimed that his company is PAID by Microsoft to be the "Global Service and Support Provider" (his exact words) for Microsoft to resolve problems related to Vista and XP. He made this point over and over.
As to why he was calling, he claimed that it was a response to (garden-variety) "Send Error Report" messages that my computer sometimes generates after a program crashes or such... According to him, his company receives these messages.
He then went through the eventvwr scam technique, where he had me open the Event Viewer and count the Red-X Errors and Yellow Warnings. He kept saying, "Jesus... that's a lot!" Of course he tried to persuade me that these errors were causing some PC slowdowns or malfunctions.
Next he had me do a search for .PNF files, another sign of distress with my computer, he claimed.
He stated that the PC has software and hardware "protection codes" which are the last 6 digits of the "Registered To" number under My Computer properties. Of course my codes had "expired."
I allowed him to remote into my PC, with a Remote Desktop Connection program, and they ran a "scan" of my computer. What they did was bring up a command window and run the Tree command to view the full directory tree structure. In other words, it looked like something fancy was happening, that actually did nothing.
At that point I'd had enough.
A quick internet search turned up a video detailing this scam:
http://www.justanswer.com/computer/6glvl-3-27-12-received-call-person-saying-represent.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXdFRzkIypI
In all of this what bugs me most was the outright LIE that these people are telling about representing MICROSOFT.
They should be prosecuted, and I'd like to know how to better report this abuse than a user's forum.
I endured a long "technical assistance" call of the sort documented in this forum as "eventvwr scam." Others have explained it in this forum with topics that that include the word "scam."
The caller (who had a heavy foreign accent) claimed that his company is PAID by Microsoft to be the "Global Service and Support Provider" (his exact words) for Microsoft to resolve problems related to Vista and XP. He made this point over and over.
As to why he was calling, he claimed that it was a response to (garden-variety) "Send Error Report" messages that my computer sometimes generates after a program crashes or such... According to him, his company receives these messages.
He then went through the eventvwr scam technique, where he had me open the Event Viewer and count the Red-X Errors and Yellow Warnings. He kept saying, "Jesus... that's a lot!" Of course he tried to persuade me that these errors were causing some PC slowdowns or malfunctions.
Next he had me do a search for .PNF files, another sign of distress with my computer, he claimed.
He stated that the PC has software and hardware "protection codes" which are the last 6 digits of the "Registered To" number under My Computer properties. Of course my codes had "expired."
I allowed him to remote into my PC, with a Remote Desktop Connection program, and they ran a "scan" of my computer. What they did was bring up a command window and run the Tree command to view the full directory tree structure. In other words, it looked like something fancy was happening, that actually did nothing.
At that point I'd had enough.
A quick internet search turned up a video detailing this scam:
http://www.justanswer.com/computer/6glvl-3-27-12-received-call-person-saying-represent.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXdFRzkIypI
In all of this what bugs me most was the outright LIE that these people are telling about representing MICROSOFT.
They should be prosecuted, and I'd like to know how to better report this abuse than a user's forum.
Caller type: Scammer
Caller: Glocal PC
Company: Global PC
Number: 875-284-8699