The hunt for tech support scammers

RV_ · May 30, 2016

These idiots called Malwarebytes! They tried to scam the Malwarebytes HQ! IN the excerpt below there just too many good screen shots to copy so as you will see below the article is short on words and high in images that are easily understood even by folks who think they know nothing about techy things.

The bottom line. No tech support company will call you telling you your computer has notified them, the vendor, that your computer has an infection. Period. If you let them take control of your computer, you are going to pay a lot of money or have your computer screwed up.

This is different than when YOU call your tech support and allow them to remotely control your computer. But if they call you, you are talking to criminals from India.

These folks called me daily then weekly then finally gave up/got tired of being cussed out in a calm voice with negative affect.. They spoof the actual Dell support phone number! That threw me. Because when I tried to call it back it actually connected me to Dell. I contacted Dell and they took an abuse report but really did not seem to care. IN fact they had my system's Dell Service tag number, which leads me to suspect that the call center support folks in India are moonlighting as thieves using their access to Dell customer files to get personal data to call us and actually give credible data! I know lots of folks would fall for it right there but again they called you and no computer vendor has software that will alert a response team that your system is infected, in warranty or not. While they have control of your computer that you gave them, they start to delete as many system files as they can before you disconnect as punishment for not falling for their amateur attempts. I began to just act innocent and take up at least a minute or two and then when they asked for my credentials I would calmly say "you are a criminal and I proceeded to call them every military and civilian creatively conceived epithet strings and accusations about their geneology until they hung up. A few started to yell back and that was what I wanted and they would hang up to my genuine deep belly laughs.

They made a mistake when they called Malwarebytes! That's right these idiots called Malwarebytes saying they were from Malwarebytes and were going to fix their computers! LMAO!

This article shows screen shots and the bill they tried to collect for nothing.

Excerpt:

"Just when you think you’ve seen everything when it comes to tech support scams, you realize how far the miscreants behind this plague will go to rob innocent people.

A group known as Tech Kangaroos has been impersonating legitimate software companies and charging their victims hundreds, sometimes even over a thousand dollars, for completely bogus software support. In an added twist, the same scammers later call back their customers to offer them a ‘refund’, where they actually steal even more money.

The scammers use search engines and other types of advertising to lure in victims. For example, a query on Bing for certified support for Malwarebytes returns the following top result: (Go to the full article below to see the picture here)

This is a fraudulent page which the crooks built by stealing the graphics from the Malwarebytes website and altering it to trick people into calling a toll-free number: (Go to the full article below to see the picture here)

There are also several more scam pages, all looking very professional: (Go to the full article below to see the picture here)

The next phase of the con consists of taking remote control of people’s computers and performing a fake security scan as a scare tactic. (Go to the full article below to see the picture here)

We called the number and went through the process; it was hard not to notice the constant stream of voices from the boiler room where those so-called technicians operate from. Within minutes, we were presented with a bill for over one thousand dollars. (Go to the full article below to see the picture here)

When asking for the name of the company, the technician lied repeatedly, but there were enough clues left for us to find out exactly who they were. One thing was for sure, they weren’t Malwarebytes tech support and they certainly did not like being questioned about that. Sadly, these scammers can’t handle rejection too well. While still in control of our test computer, the technician quickly managed to disable all the services and force a reboot, in an effort to damage our computer. (Go to the full article below to see the picture here)

Collecting evidence and fighting back

Traffic analysis during our interaction with the scammer revealed several domains of interest.

•Scam site: certified.support
•Phone number: 1-800-277-6232
•Payment page: onlinetech.support/contact.php (Registrant mokshtalk@gmail.com)
•Official company site: techkangaroos.com (Registrant: reemanath@hotmail.com)

The company appears to be located in Singapore, which seems a bit unusual. However, this is not where the call centre is located. A network trace shows the scammers IP address is actually from New Delhi, India: (Go to the full article below to see the picture here)"

See all the screen shots and pictures of the exposed scammers here: https://blog.malwarebytes.org/threat-analysis/criminals/2016/05/the-hunt-for-tech-support-scammers/?utm_source=double-opt-%20in&utm_medium=email-internal-b2c&utm_campaign=EM-May-2nd-2016newsletter&utm_content=support-scammers

The reader comments at the bottom show how some folks upload some scare files on the scammers while interacting with them on a VM.

As long as folks don't read articles like this there will be enough money in it to keep on defrauding the ignorant.

Jim & Alice · May 30, 2016

Thanks for sharing, Derek. Those that are not very computer literate... like my generation... are quite vulnerable to this.

I'll put this on into the background database. and Malwarebytes... LOL !

JIm

RV_ · May 31, 2016

YW Jim!

Hey these folks are good if they are folks who don't understand the simple rule that anything important won't come in an email from the IRS/FBI/HOMELAND SECURITY/NSA/ etc. They want face to face or will serve you face to face. But to the rest of us the scammers are terrible actors and apparent with a few questions. I do resent the intrusion so do tie them up.

Dutch_12078 · May 31, 2016

My wife has a whole routine she goes into when she gets one of those "We've been notified of a problem in your computer." calls. She gets all excited claiming they must be calling to tell her she won a computer, and she always wanted one. You can hear them trying to interrupt her, but she just keeps rattling on abut how much she's always wanted a computer until they hang up. I just hang up and add them to my block list...

SpaceNorman · June 3, 2016

My wife has a whole routine she goes into when she gets one of those "We've been notified of a problem in your computer." calls. She gets all excited claiming they must be calling to tell her she won a computer, and she always wanted one. You can hear them trying to interrupt her, but she just keeps rattling on abut how much she's always wanted a computer until they hang up. I just hang up and add them to my block list...

Back when the kids were little - I used to hand the phone to the youngest and give the kid the OK to "talk to 'em!".

jjwicklund · June 6, 2016

I get these calls about my WINDOWS COMPUTER I tell them I have a Mac and hangup.

wildmandmc · June 6, 2016

atleast once a week a get a call from customers , that they let into there pc. only good news is when they ask for the payment they hang up. but that is actually after the fact they let them in. Then it becomes what settings did they alter, what bug/worm did they install.