Four Brits cuffed in multimillion-quid Windows tech support call scam probe Four Britons have been arrested on suspicion of helping organise fraudulent telephone support scam calls that caused “hundreds of millions of pounds” of losses worldwide. The City of London police force – working with forces in Surrey and the UK northeast as part of “Operation Thistle” – collared the four alleged mischief- …
https://xkcd.com/272/(You already know which one it is)
Don't be ridiculous. That would never happen! I've been to PC World and there are no staff to help you whenever you actually want to talk to them. They have a special AI system that uses the store's CCTV cameras to analyse body language so that staff can be alerted only to talk to customers who've already found what they need, so as to escort them to the tills and ensure they buy the extended warranty.
Cruel and unusual punishment is what we all got once Trump got in...
At least exports and stocks have gone due to him up!
That is.. He exports a lot of crap, threats and the crule&unusual you mention above, and the US has become (more of) a laughingstock to the rest of the world!
“The arrests have come about as a result of work by the City of London Police and forensic and investigative services provided by Microsoft analysing tens of thousands of Action Fraud reports and working with other affected organisations such as BT, to attempt to trace the source of the problem,” said the City cops in a statement.
Microsoft are now doing criminal investigations? If evidence isn't generated and validated by the plod, I'm not sure that will stand up in a court. (?)
Ignoring private prosecutions and expert witnesses, anyone can provide evidence. Most crime has to be supported by evidence not generated by Plod. Take Burglary, for example. You need a statement saying that (a) the person had no right to be there and (b) that they had no permission to take the object. None of that can come from the Police, it has to come from the victim.
In this case, at the minimum you'd need a statement from Microsoft saying that they weren't legitimate Microsoft employees or the defense could just go "they were working for Microsoft, you haven't proved that they weren't". Remember that the prosecution need to prove the case, the defense justs needs to introduce doubt.
Remember that the prosecution need toprove the casesuggest that there is "secret testimony" that cannot be shown to the court because "national security" or "may hamper other investigations", the defense justs needs tointroduce doubtgo screw themselves, they should roll over on the accused and everyone should plead guilty at the first moment, saves us having to fabricate evidence.
FTFY.
Yes I'm jaded by watching a loved one go through NZ's criminal "justice" system. Why do you ask?
"Microsoft are now doing criminal investigations? If evidence isn't generated and validated by the plod, I'm not sure that will stand up in a court. (?)"
So i you were to witness a crime and aren't a policeman you don't think your evidence would stand up in court? Anybody can be give evidence in court to what they witness.
Someone with appropriate expertise can give expert evidence which includes what opinions they draw. They don't have to be police officers; in the UK forensic scientists aren't, nor are pathologists. I think when it comes to investigating Microsoft scams Microsoft would have provided expert advice to the police and their personnel (not the company itself) would be readily accepted as experts by the court.
"Someone with appropriate expertise can give expert evidence which includes what opinions they draw. "
In a Crown Court case the judge kept reprimanding a prosecution "expert witness" for stating opinions which were outside her perceived remit. She was trying too hard to help the prosecution. The jury acquitted the defendant.
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In a Crown Court case the judge kept reprimanding a prosecution "expert witness" for stating opinions which were outside her perceived remit. She was trying too hard to help the prosecution.
I've had the experience of the prosecution QC (who'd called me) trying to push me further than I was prepared to go. Eventually the defence lodged an objection.
Adam is right. Although an expert is called by one side or the other their real role should be to help the court. In my day I and my immediate colleagues were Civil Servants although one or two labs, notably the Met, were run by the police although the staff were civilian. I'm very much against the privatisation that's happened. Indeed, I thought at the time that the lab should have had a supervisory board from the judiciary to emphasise the fact that we were servants of the court.
Evidences are usually "collected" or "seized", not "generated". The collection may require the help of someone with the proper access and expertise, and they could be outside the police. In some jurisdictions, people with the skills required to help an investigation may be appointed as temporary "auxiliary officer" and what they do has full legal value as if performed by a normal officer - of course there are requirements to be appointed (i.e. specific technical skills, no criminal record, no conflict of interests, etc.)
Of course any evidence may be challenged in court, even when collected by police.
Let them go free from jail, but install ten premium rate phones in their house, spread out in different rooms.
Make each phone's number publicly available for anyone to call, at any time, with the call revenue going to charity.
They must answer them for at least 30 seconds. Ignoring them, leaving them off the hook, unplugging or destruction of the phones will result in an additional phone being installed.
A friend who is a lawyer by trade asked my technical opinion on something and I gave them an answer. I then said that was my possibly uninformed opinion and not an expert opinion as it wasn't something I was technically qualified to answer. They said that I'd just given the same answer as their Expert Witness had and the case now wasn't going to go to court as the other side had agreed with the expert who had a PHD and other qualifications I don't.
He couldn't tell me anything much about the case but the question was about whether something sent over a wifi signal was 100% hack proof. I said no and explained various ways things could intercepted, levels of security etc.
A few years back, after I'd started getting more than one a week of these fake PC/IT/Internet support calls (always from someone sounding rather Indian but allegedly called "Mikey" or "Isobel" or somesuch), I started explaining - politely and calmly - that I knew the caller was a criminal fraudster and whatever it was they were after, they weren't going to get it from me. Usually they hang up at this point.
(Sometimes they get threatening, offensive, or abusive in response to my initially polite and calm response - at which point they generally discover that this particular calm, polite, and well spoken middle aged Englishman can be an awful lot more offensive and abusive than them. I make a special effort to maintain a maddeningly calm voice in the process - well, it winds 'em up more.)
The tactic appears to have reduced the frequency of that type of nuisance call by an order of magnitude: it was more than once a week, now it's less than once a month.
So does this mean that mean we get to find out Guruaid and their parent company, Lester Inc's involvement in this? Guruaid comes up time and time again when we hear of our customers having received tech support scam calls or fake adverts on their computer. Their reputation is terrible, but they still present themselves as a legitimate company.
I'm sure there are multiple 'companies' involved in these scams, and multiple Indian call centres who service many of these scammy organisations. There's no reason to assume that these same call centres aren't also used in the seamier side of call-centre use -- marketing calls, PPI scams, cold-calling 'surveys' etc.
On the few occasions when I have received one of these scam calls - it seemed to be a few days after a phone/chat conversation with an apparently offshore Help centre for either my BT line or my ISP.
It would make sense. If you know someone has reported problems - then they are going to be more susceptible to a caller who appears to be in the loop.
Recently I received my first ever scam call on my mobile - a robocall claiming I could win £1000. Usually the number is kept to only close friends. However a Wickes order a couple of weeks before could not be placed online without a mandatory mobile number starting with 07.
That number had then been given to the courier company who made part of the delivery. The rest of the delivery was outsourced by Wickes directly to Marshalls - who gave the number to a pallet delivery company.
A "how did we do" survey email possibly meant yet another third party was given the information too.
marketing calls
I (once upon a time) used to get quite a few of these. My standard response was to ask how much they were prepared to pay me for my data and then argue (politely) with the caller when they informed me that they wouldn't.
After all, they have gone to all the bother to set up the survey and hire people to call me - so the data must have *some* value to them. Therefore, as a participant, I want my cut. Because "Capitalism".
After a while (I suspect that my name got onto at least one "awkward customer" list) the calls dried up and I haven't had any in years.
"What if it's your GP's office calling? "Mine's been told that I don't answer unless there's callerID showing and if they want an answer they need to make sure it is.
My voicemail now says "If you cannot be bothered showing me your phone number, I cannot be bothered answering your call", and a little more to suggest they leave a brief message which might be checked.
Though my Doc doesn't hide their number, nor do I expect they'd have a reason to really. Very few legitimate callers do hide their numbers, and if it's really important they'll let the number show somehow.
Sadly it seems I'm going to have to work a bit more.
I was getting one or two of these a week which provided a bit of downtime when WFH. I developed quite a skill at answering their questions perfectly accurately without giving away enough to highlight it was never going to work.
As a result, I've got a Chromebook with 6 or 7 different versions of their "virus fix" (*cough* TeamViewer) in the downloads folder. On that occasion, ry as he might, he couldn't get the .exe files to run but since I was playing the part of "concerned computer user" perfectly he kept trying, bless him. I thought he'd rumbled me when he asked what brand of computer it was - I suppose to weed out Mac users - but he was satisfied with "Erm, it says Acer on the top, is that the brand?"
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Why do people fall for this?
I just don't get it.
Try helping an elderly computer-illiterate person out, especially someone who's heard many fear-monger stories about malware (and perhaps some about people going to jail because if the actions of malware hidden on their systems).
Trust me, you'll "get it".
I have a nice way of dealing with these calls.
After the "expert" explains they are from MS support etc I talk to them in a low voice for a few seconds (to get them to listen close/turn volume up) then I place my phone next to one of my speakers (I have a lot of audio hardware etc) and give them a solid blast of 15 kHz sine wave :P
Seems its not so comfy on the ears :D
I have never tried this response (a poster on a forum shared it) but I'd say it is a good one to try ...
The scammer stated that the person's computer was sending out malware.
- The potential victim replied, yes. That is what it does.
The scammer said it should not do that. He needs to have access to check it out.
- The reply was: Yes., I would be pleased to.share my files with you. After all, it is what I do.
The scammer hesitated and declined the generous offer. He immediately ended the call.
My last experience with The Lads from India ran 6 hours over four days and involved 6 telephone calls. They took time off over the weekend. I repeatedly called Local Plod and Action Fraud and begged them to intercept my communications. Zero Fucks Given let alone any Action Taken. Local Plod tried to argue that this was the reason why they needed to intercept everything. I have no idea which earworm was in place such that he missed that I, in this particular case, was begging them to do so.
End game, second call on Tuesday, I was asked to restart my computer so I ask them how to restart a virtual machine. Then we go through the problem with my credit card numbers not working which has stopped them extracting £650 from my bank account via the account they have set up for me through Western Union, apparently Western Union is Microsofts Bank and the £650 was a refund from Microsoft for being slightly rubbish. Then we get back to shutting down my virtual machine.
It takes a bit of time for my expert to twig but he finally gets it, I can hear him asking his mates, and then he gets a bit upset about me wasting so much of his time so I explain that he has been had and how he has been had then he asks me 'Are You Ghandu?' I do not know what that means but eventually after being asked a couple of times he triumphs and explains it to me. I tell him I am not, he does not have my money and ask him 'Who is the Fool?' He hangs up.
I call up Western Union who are suitably thick and pass me around the houses until one of their staff works it out and matches the account and details to the creation time and suggests they have cancelled it. I can probably reliably guess that they have cancelled the account set up on my behalf but completely failed to investigate the account that my £650 not refund was being sent to.
Perhaps someone from Western Union can rock up and tell me how seriously they take such matters.
Perhaps someone from Remote Desktop Connection companies can can rock up and tell me how seriously they take such matters.
Perhaps someone from Action Fraud can rock up and tell me how seriously they take such matters.
Please do not bother. You do Not.
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