Felix.

Some bloke phoned up today trying to tell me that my computer was infected by:

“... small fragments of computer data that virus checkers will not find – but they will break my computer in any case...”

He then went on to attempt to remote access my computer, at which I told him to sod off. But he got me to look at the computers ‘event viewer’ which shows various errors and warnings. He stated that my records were really bad and shows my computer will explode any second. I told him that these are simply minor error logs which the computer has stored and will be nothing to worry about.

Now I know very little about computers – so am I right about these logs or are they more sinister.

JohnSmith

,I'm surprised you even took the call unless you knew him ?

JohnSmith

More to the point, how did he know you had a computer ?

Felix.

I don't mind these calls every now and then as i enjoy a good argument with some moron who can be easily wound up.

The point of his call was obviously to get access to my computer or to sell me something - neither of which was going to happen, but it was good to string him along and drop him when i got bored.

It ended up with him saying "why are you speaking to me on the phone if you will not allow me access to your computer"..... "you phoned me, you pillock"

douglasb

It can be fun winding up these scammers. My best so far was managing to get one of them to tell me to shut up and hang up on me!

Felix.

I had a 10 minute argument with one in which i ended the call. He then phoned me back with the opening line of "... do you think you can just hang up on me, I'll just keep phoning you back..."

Another good one is to pretend you are hard of hearing - see how loud they have shout at you. And then carry on miss-hearing them. I have visions of some call centre with a bloke in the middle shouting his head off

Markus

Had one a few months back. He said he was from Semantic infotech. Obviously trading on the Symantec name and hoping people will fall for it.

He said he could see my machine and that it had lots of infections, the registry was corrupt, and other stuff. I was amused at this and explained why he was a lying little bugger

1. Computer was actually off at that point
2. Network setup will prevent you from getting in to it
3. It's a Mac, running OS X, so it does not have a registry.

He got a bit miffed after that so I simply hung up, grabbed the number and gave the local nick a ring, as I could see such scum convincing older or less knowledgeable people to let them into their machine. Local nick wasn't shocked, said they get weekly calls from people reporting this.

Bugatti

I had a similar call and had nothing better to do on the day so played along until he tried to get me to download some software about 10 mins into the call.

He swore at me and cut off when I told him my laptop doesn't have internet access.

Felix.

This 'event viewer' then - is it a harmless list of minor errors on the computer

jods

yeah - ignore it

Miniman

iTrader: (2)

It contains all sorts of things, from just status messages, to warnings, through to errors and major failures events.

Most are psuedo English and can be read easily enough. Some probably you'll not understand, but others say things like "disk full", or "computer started".

From experience every Windows computer I've ever seen has errors on it (plus lots of warnings). But most run happily enough despite this. You could keep on top of them chasing down the errors, but then you'd have to very very **** and nothing else to do in life (including sleep).

It certainly wouldn't be a place that virus writers would put an event and I'd say that unless you have a specific issue with something, that you'd not normally view it or worry about it.

jods

My Laptop has had 497 "Errors" in the last 7 days - It still works perfectly

ChrisB

A lot of the messages in Event Viewer are informational and of no help but in the event of a bigger problem, it does give information which can help you fix things.

Luminous

iTrader: (3)

I agree with most of the above, I've just taken a look into my event viewer to see what was lurking there.

2 Critical errors this week - that would be when my sound card went pop and my machine failed until the card was removed
300 Errors - 150 were apple's bonjour service, which I don't need so I just turned that off. Don't want it wasting resources and then complaining when I don't even use it
- another 90 errors were from VSS, the shadow copy service that will try to copy a file when it is in use. Since I have two backup applications, one for my NAS drive and the other being Carbonite which is an offsite backup service. These errors are when both applications want access to the file that is in use. Very annoying when it happens, may drop Carbonite next year if it keeps doing this, as it actually sometimes stops me saving a document I am working on if it decides its going to back it up to the cloud while I am using it.

Other than that all is good.

Take a look and see what you find, you never know you may end up with a faster machine if it points to something obvious.

jonc

This is interesting, I never seem to get any calls from these people. Perhaps these calls are targetted using info from marketing "agencies". Whenever I need to register for something, I always select anything to do with IT as an occupation. I did answer one call where they asked for my wife. I continued with the call, let them reel off their script etc. When it came to doing something on my PC I told them to hang on as it takes time to boot up my PC. I put the phone down by the computer to make a cup of coffee and when I came back 5 minutes later, he was still there on the phone! So he reeled off some instructions to start up Internet Explorer, spent several minutes with him trying to help me "find" it to launch it to download a bit of software so that he could connect to my PC. In the end I told him I can't see the Start button as I use Ubuntu, whats that he asks at which point I hang up.

JohnSmith

LOL, never had one call me either, but I did get a phone call today telling me I am owed money from PPI

Told him I'm not interested so he asked why and I told him I have already claimed, and he asked about my mortgage and I told him yes got that back too he did try but he really didn't have any answer after that

kingofturds

iTrader: (1)

I don't even plug my home phone in any more. If it's not a cold caller or a scammer, it's some old granny wanting to book her budgie in to the vets.

legb4rsk

I really miss those calls.

I have 33 years working in the computer/internet industry.

Oh what fun! Anyone got their number?

DYK

Its a scam.....

scunnered

iTrader: (1)

I had a call yesterday from an Asian sounding guy claiming to be from a company called "Broadband Solutions". He tried to tell me my computer was slowing down and he said he could help. I said I was busy, but asked him for his name and a contact number. He gave it quite freely. Probably he thought had a mug on the line. I then informed him I needed the information so as I could prosecute as my number is registered with TPS.
Strangely, he hung up on me. I wonder why?

gpssti4

iTrader: (6)

Woop woop, just had my first sucker call me. 15 minutes later he is hoarse from shouting as I'm hard of hearing and it's a bad line
I offer to call him back and he tells me it's an international number. I'm working from home so no bother there as my company pays the bill! He gives me +44624196628 if anyone wants to wind him up. Also the web sites he gave me are www.ammyy.com and www.18tech.net
I feel loved now!

Leslie

You could always ask him to visit you to demonstrate what he is telling you, and then answer the door in uniform!

Les

brendy76

iTrader: (6)

What..Like a bus conductor?