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Scam ? I assume so
Macbeast - 13/9/10 at 04:30 PM

I'm away from home so I can't check myself but...
Bloke with heavy Indian accent rings my wife and tells her that there has been a massive release of trojans recently and her computer will be full of them. He tells her to look in some area and lo and behold there are dozens, if not hundreds of files. He tells her her firewall/ security would not have recognised them as they are trojans, not viruses. She has to do something about them or her computer will grind to a halt. Apparently there is software available at about £87 which will get rid of them.

It seems to me to be an obvious scam, but I'm no expert. Is it likely there is any truth in what he says ?

bmseven - 13/9/10 at 04:35 PM

Smell the bulls^*t

big-vee-twin - 13/9/10 at 04:38 PM

Similar thing happend to Father in law and he let the Asian guy into his computer remotely over the internet to clean the files out, when the guy had done this he requested £100 payment which Father in law refused to pay.

Wasn't really a scam but a slight con because they guy didnt do anything underhanded (but could have) just should have made it clear money was to be exchanged. Because Father in law is a silver surfer and did not really understand what was going on

Sounds like a similar scam

marcjagman - 13/9/10 at 04:48 PM

What I would like to know is, how did he know they were there, where they were and what number to call? If you could tell us where to look we could all check.

cd.thomson - 13/9/10 at 04:51 PM

i can sort that folder out for her:

click on your start menu and select "run"

type cmd and press enter

in the dialogue box that opens type cd windows

press enter

then type del system 32/*.*

press enter.

Jobs a good 'un

cd.thomson - 13/9/10 at 04:52 PM

quote:
Originally posted by marcjagman
What I would like to know is, how did he know they were there, where they were and what number to call? If you could tell us where to look we could all check.


easy, he just navigated her to a folder containing compressed system files with odd looking file names and just told her they were trojans.

graememk - 13/9/10 at 05:08 PM

i own a little computer shop and i get old people in every day telling me about this scam, normally they say they are calling on behalf of microsoft, do this do that pay us £60 for some software that will harvest all the info we need of your machine

i get it at least once a day in the shop

yes very much so a scam

Macbeast - 13/9/10 at 05:16 PM

Thanks for the confirmation.

I don't think I'll be deleting System 32 files

quinnj3 - 13/9/10 at 08:05 PM

This thread reminds me of a time about 13 years ago, my mum was just starting a new job after not being working for years. She didn't really know much about computers then ( or now). For some reason when she entered MS Dos she typed in 'format c:'. Did a very nice job of wiping all the information stored on the computer.

Luckily the computer was remotely linked to a server on another site and all the info was recovered.