Dealing With Computer Support Scammers.

[Rick]

After being harassed by a fraud computer support company many times, i figured it was time to stall them & let them eventually connect using teamviewer. What they didn't know that I was using virtualbox with an os that can be easily re-installed.(if they decided to infect it,i was curious on what their process is) After they hung up on me I contacted teamviewer support via e-mail to see if they can deactivate their teamviewer id & ip.

If you receive a call like this I recommend doing this to waste their time(if you have the time) and maybe prevent someone from being scammed.

• Say that the computer is slow or turned off
• Tell them the internet isn't working and it takes some time to come back up.
• You don't have internet or a computer.
• Question them on why there are "errors" (they know about errors before connecting)
• Say it's not my computer. (why they hung up on me)
• If you want to troll them badly,let them connect to a linux based operating system with teamviewer installed.(they only "support" windows os that im aware of)

References
Related thread: https://digiex.net/digiex/news-arti...call-indian-possible-fraud-scam-going-uk.html
More info from microsoft: Fraudulent Emails and Credit Card Scam Tips | Microsoft Security

This is an email(in the quotes) I received from teamviewer support. This info should be helpful if you have been affected.
If the scammers have connected to your pc, you can save time for teamviewer support and send them your id & make sure to note why you're sending them the id.(more info below)
Contact: TeamViewer

Our product can be bought for commercial usage and we offer our service for free, if used in a personal way like helping friends and family.
We are currently aware of an Indian based company which is operating under various names. They are abusing our free service for scamming private persons.
The similarities of most fraud calls are:

- A person with a strong Indian accent called
- Stating they are from Microsoft or certified by Microsoft (Microsoft will NEVER make cold calls!)
- Stating they get a lot of reports from the private persons system (viruses etc.)
- Leading them e.g. to the Windows Event Viewer (Start -> Run -> "eventvwr")
- Offering support and sell a service contract or anything similar
- Connecting via a Remote Support Tool to fix the "problem"
- Installing free anti-virus tools or doing suspicious actions on the system.

They are using free products like ours and several other free anti-virus systems, charging the customer for installing these. We have already contacted the vendors of the anti-virus programs used. They are also investigating this matter.

There have also been several cases of "fake refunds": instead of receiving a refund payment, money was stolen from the bank accounts in question.

Here is what you can do:

- Get in contact with your bank or credit card institution if any transactions have been made or any financial information might have been compromised (bank account numbers, PINs etc).
If a payment was done via paypal, immediately get in contact with them.
In most cases, it is possible to get a refund.

- Get in contact with a consumer protection program and warn other people about the company you were supposedly contacted by. The more people know about such criminal activities the harder it will get for fraudsters to have success.

Links to homepages of such organizations are listed below.

UK: Latest News | Action Fraud
AU: http://www.scamwatch.gov.au/content/index.phtml/tag/reportascam
CA: Welcome Page | Page d'accueil
USA: Internet Fraud Information | USA.gov

If you are based in the UK, please also get in contact with the Telephone Preference Service. Due to UK government regulations, cold calls are illegal and reporting those callers would be a great help.

TPS



- If possible, please send us your TeamViewer ID, which is the 9 digit code that can be seen after starting our program. The ID will help us with localizing these people within our network and blocking them. This will prevent them from harming further persons.
The ID can also be found in the log files TeamViewer will write. They are located in %ProgramFiles(x86)%\TeamViewer\Version[n] , the filename is TeamViewer[n]_Logfile.log ([n] being the respective version number).

Thank you very much in advance.

To ensure that it is safe to use your computer again (for example, for online banking), we recommend having it checked by a local IT support company or a person you can trust.

If there is anything else we can help you with or if there are still any open questions, please feel free to contact us again.