Phone scammer calls the ultimate wrong number

When phone scammers called a number trying to gain access to a computer to steal information, they couldn’t have known that they called probably the last person on the planet that they should have.

Matt Horan is one of the UK’s top cyber security experts and works for one of the top firms C3AI Solutions.  When he realised what the scammer was trying to do he put the call on speaker and recorded the whole thing.

Mr Horan played with the scammer stringing the caller along for 35 minutes and pretended to be an inexperience computer user passing the phone around to his “helpers” to stretch the call along.  Finally, he told the scammer that he didn’t actually have an internet connection which caused the caller to swear and hang up.

In this instance, the scammer claimed to be from computer software giant Microsoft and wants to help with a “problem with their computer.”  Mr Horan told The Deep South Media, “They then instruct that person to look at the computer’s ‘systems and events logs’, which is simply a log of every action taken. They tell them that this is evidence of on-going malicious attacks.

“After that, they try and get them to log into TeamViewer or something similar which means they then can gain remote access and control of the target computer.

“They then have all the information on a computer or network and can infect the system, read emails, steal passwords, or encrypt the stored data – basically do anything they want.”

Always ignore calls like these as Microsoft and companies like them will not make unsolicited calls.  All calls should be forwarded to the Government’s ScamWatch website.

Have you had these calls?  Did you try to string them along like Matt Horan?  Is it about time that someone does something about these calls?